


My Brother's Keeper

by jarynw02



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2018-11-01 22:36:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 16
Words: 29,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10931439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jarynw02/pseuds/jarynw02
Summary: Rhysand's sister is alive and Under the Mountain by his side, the Night Court whores. She finds protection in a sexual relationship with Eris only to learn Tamlin is her mate just as Ferye is brought in to save them all.





	1. Chapter 1

I’d recognized him instantly. My brother had shared his image in my mind once, years ago, as he explained a turbulent history with the High Lord and let me in on what really happened the day he’d gathered Under the Mountain with the members of our Court of Nightmares. Though I’d missed the party, I would be retrieved by Amarantha soon afterwards.

Too soon. Much too soon.

The faerie male sitting atop the dais alongside our captor moved with miserable carelessness. His long, handsome face dripped with apathy and his eyes bore through the back wall of earth in the great hall Amarantha had called us to. She wailed her usual grievances of a few different fae. Someone was always too quiet, too mischievous, too nice. There was always a reason for her to end life, something deep inside her begged to devour the essence of those around her. She leached kindness.

I looked away for only a second, watching my wine swirl in my glass before I took a light sip. My eyes were drawn right back to the male, his blonde hair poured down his shoulders like melted gold. My breath hitched. I’d recognized this male not only for his history, my brother’s stories, or what he meant to the curse that trapped me here. The male’s eyes furrowed, only slightly - completely unnoticeable unless you were looking for it - and his slow gaze turned on me. My lungs heaved in my chest and I uncrossed and recrossed my legs, focusing on not shattering the glass of wine between my shaking fingers. 

I recognized him the way you recognize yourself in the mirror - a stranger at first, but then… And I knew it, as his eyes met mine and his nostrils flared before he ripped his attention away from me, I knew that he felt it too. 

I knew then I had found my mate.

“What’s got you so flustered?” a voice tore through my mind and I nearly threw my wine towards it before steadying myself in my seat in a table far, far away from Amarantha’s throne. I turned a glare toward my brother and he held his hands up in mock innocence. “It was just a question,” he defended with a turn of his lips, the hint of a smile barely there. 

I rolled my eyes and drawled, “Rhyyysand, stop.”

He replied with a gleaming, pure smile. 

“Did you need something?” I scoffed, looking away from him and took another sip of my wine, very aware of the many sets of eyes that typically watched anytime my brother and I were together.

He lifted a brow. “What’s going on with you? Why are you being so…” he struggled for a word, coming up short, “like  _ this _ .” 

There was a pull in my chest to look back toward the dais - back toward Tamlin - and I made sure to reinforce my mental shields even if it set off red flags to Rhys. He’d spent his entire life protecting me and after the day my mother and I were brought before this ragtag court of Amarantha’s beneath this Cauldron-forsaken mountain, I knew he would never forgive himself for letting us be found. 

We hadn’t seen our mother since that day. 

I decided to tell him as much of the truth as I could. “I’m just nervous,” I murmured, keeping my voice down. “Tamlin’s here. Time is running out.”

Rhys nodded. His hands slipped into his pockets and I watched as that far off look took over his entire body like a new skin. 

“Hey there, pet.” Eris approached us with the same bold, witless swagger he carried himself with back in the Autumn Court. He bypassed Rhys completely, flopping in the chair at my side. “What’s up, baby?”

His arm slid behind my shoulders and if I weren’t so caught up realizing a damn mating bond I would have laughed at the contortion of my brother’s face.

“Eris,” he said, his voice clipped.

I let myself lean towards the High Lord’s son, ignoring the ache in my chest and the wonder of whether the High Lord of the Spring Court was watching.

“Is this really still happening?” Rhys asked and, to his credit, I was surprised he was finally so forth-coming. I’d long known of my brother’s distaste for Eris, but it had been lonely Under the Mountain. After my original introduction to my new home beneath the earth, I’d only been given a cell - a cell with which any male was allowed to visit - and I’d rarely been allowed into the large meetings like this one. But one day I’d overheard Eris and his brothers joking around like they weren’t damned awful beasts of men and something Eris said had actually made me laugh. 

It didn’t take much of a pursuit on my part for him to find interest in me. 

Since then, I’d moved into his room. I was allowed in all the meetings, all the dinners, all the celebrations. And since then, well, I wasn’t as lonely as I was down in that cell. 

“Yes,” I said, attempting to placate the Illyrian irritability bubbling to the surface. “It is and it’s fine. You have nothing to worry about.”

Eris squeezed my shoulder, but said nothing. We weren’t monogamous or anything, but if he was fucking other women it wasn’t in the bed we shared. Not that I would mind. In my time with the heir to the Autumn Court I’d found comfort and, surprisingly, friendship. But one look at the dual thrones at the heart of the great hall and I knew there was something so much more than this out there - something so much deeper was possible, and maybe, waiting for me.

“Sure,” Rhys said, shifting on his heels restlessly. I knew he wanted to get away from Eris, but wouldn’t leave me alone with him if he could help it.

I turned to the male at my side and let a slow, conniving grin light my features. “I had fun last night.”

Eris laughed, the deep sound barrelling through his broad chest. “Yeah? Me too.”

I leaned over him, setting one hand on his thigh while the other tucked a stray auburn hair behind his ear. I could feel Rhysand’s presence over my shoulder and my heartbeat quickened with this game.

“I’m still a little sore, but I definitely want to do  _ that  _ again tonight.”

I could practically hear Rhysand’s face twitching before I felt the empty space he left behind upon his retreat.

“Why do you do that to him?” Eris asked, a goofy smile slathered on his face, his eyes a little glazed - betraying where his thoughts had lead.

I shrugged submitting to my own grin and a soft laugh. “It’s fun to get a rise out of him.”

A wave of silence fell into us and our heads immediately lifted to the throne. A crowd had gathered all looking to Amarantha, who remained seated as she always did, except now her face was bright, shining with the wild possession that overcame her when the opportunity to torture was delivered to her feet. 

I stood, my eyes naturally searching for Tamlin, the fae male I’d never spoken to before, to see that he was still in his seat at her side. His presence was completely withdrawn, his eyes hollow. My chest ached. 

Then the shrieking began. I could smell the scent of a human as a girl was carried into the hall and up to the dais, her body wild and writhing beneath the grip of the guards.

Amarantha cackled, “Ah Tamlin, did you think you could hide her from me?”

I took off, leaving Eris still seated next to my empty glass of wine. I didn’t run, unwilling to draw too much attention to myself, but I didn’t bother being subtle in shoving a few fae out of the way until I was close enough to see without being seen in return. The guards pulled her upright, forcing her into a position as much like standing as possible while her body convulsed with fear. I hoped she wouldn’t beg. Begging would only feed Amarantha and make her take her time.

The Attor crept onto the impromptu stage of dirt, created from the wide berth the High Fae always kept from the evil commander and her throne. The leathery creature circled the girl, coming to her front to look her directly in the eye. She finally stopped fighting, finally stopped screaming. I could taste the salt of her tears on my tongue from where I stood more than twenty paces away. 

“I’m sure you’ll be glad to know Rhysand sold you out, my dear Tamlin.” Amarantha’s voice had always sounded worse than the gravelly bite of the Attor’s in my mind. Her hair pooled in wild waves around her face and she tapped her finger idly on the arm of her chair. The eye of Jurian was completely in view, even from my distance. That was a story I’d never want to hear again. 

Then I saw my brother step up into the circle and my heart sped. My feet moved of their own accord, taking a few steps closer, weaving past another few faeries, but I stopped myself before I neared the frontlines. Seeing Rhys in this spotlight Under the Mountain was something that I would never get used to. It would never be easy to watch him be made a spectacle of. It would never be easy to watch him bear the weight of Amarantha’s path of destruction and torment. 

And watching him approach the girl aside the Attor, looking like the most bored creature in the room, was so, so hard. 

My eyes found Tamlin and I realized Rhys was not the most bored member of the court this day. It was as if his body was here with us, sat on a pedestal like a doll, but he himself was somewhere unreachable. He was still, much too still.

“You actually thought you could do it, didn’t you?” Amarantha purred, baiting Tamlin to join in on her fun. I wasn’t sure if he would be better off playing into her games or clinging to that mask of apathetic other-worldliness. 

Tamlin didn’t speak. Didn’t move. I couldn’t even see him breathe.

“Well then, if you don’t care for her then I suppose there’s no need to keep your human lover alive, is there?”

The screaming began again. I clenched my teeth, willing the girl to shut her mouth. My brother must have felt the same way, for he shot the human an immobilizing glare before her mouth clamped shut, his magic at play. But reigning her in did nothing for the tears that streamed down her face as her dripping nose struggling to keep up with her sobbing breaths. 

The guards drug her to the ground and she started kicking, slamming a human’s worth of her strength into one guard. He hardly flinched, instead grabbing the foot that kicked him, and then the other. When she was flat on the ground, the Attor began its circling, a slimy gray twist of a smile spread across his face. Rhys moved away, staying in the clearing, but out of the way where Amarantha and Tamlin could have full view.

Full view of the first slice the Attor loosed, barely drawing blood across the girl’s cheek. She fought the guards who pinned down her hands and feet tirelessly, but they held firm. The creature ripped off her pallid pea colored dress, yanking at the garments covering her body until he saw only flesh. Each spindly dagger of a finger traced the curves of her body, her skin splitting and spilling its contents. Her screams filled the great hall, shattering any facade of a formal meal we might have been holding onto only minutes before.

I watched every second of the Attor peeling away the human girl, dissecting her alive, and I thought about my own scars - the ones Eris never spoke of in the quiet of our bed, the ones Rhys looked for every time he came near.

And I wondered if Tamlin would have watched me with the same belligerent disinterest when I had first been brought before Amarantha. 


	2. Chapter 2

I had seen my brother drink before, but not quite like this. Rhysand had levels of drinking and it was never a casual experience. He was always either celebrating or commiserating and both had the potential to be dangerous to those around him. He was Illyrian, so he could hold his weight, but he never stopped before that line that sent him perilously over the edge into the well of emotion he kept so well hidden during his sober hours. 

It was dinnertime and even hours after the human girl had been brought in and tortured the walls still echoed her screams. Eventually Eris had pulled me away, seeing the way my face tightened with rage and my eyes had pooled too much moisture. My brother, however, had stayed by the side of the human for hours. No one had left the great hall since then, transitioning directly from lunch to dinner. New food had been magically presented before us, our wine glasses and goblets filled to the brim by invisible hands. And as soon as her body had been staked in gruesome pieces to the back wall, directly in the spot where Tamlin had stared wordlessly all afternoon, Rhysand had reached for the nearest faerie wine.

And then another, and another.

“He’ll be fine,” Eris whispered, bending down to pretend to kiss at my neck, one arm around my back. It was always just a game with us, especially when all his brothers were standing around us, being their typical grumbly, snarky selves. Well, all his brothers but one. I shifted my weight toward Eris, reaching a hand up to steady myself with his presence, and cast  my eyes across the room to the only other faerie who checked on Tamlin as much as I did. Lucien wasn’t someone I’d ever known well. Rhys hadn’t ever brought him up, but I knew they had a brief history, mostly caused by the tension between our court and the Spring Court.

Without looking up to Eris I said, “I’ll be right back,” and headed off toward the long-haired fae, the red hue brighter than any of his siblings’. Eris hesitated before turning back to his brothers and I hoped he wouldn’t check on me again for a while. 

Lucien was one of the few masked fae Under the Mountain, the likes of which seemed to stick together. Whether it was related to the mask, or the tension between the Spring Court and the rest of Prythian, I didn’t know. Beneath his fox-faced mask he was chatting with two other males I’d never met before, one in a pewter mask with no sheen and another in a cobalt blue that had a comic nose covering his true one. Lucien was the last to notice me and just as I was preparing something charming to say about the blue male’s nose, he left abruptly with the pewter male in towe. 

Out of the corner of my eye I saw my brother chatting with a few older males from the Court of Nightmares, a new goblet in one hand while the other was waving around frantically in the midst of an apparently harrowing tale. 

“Princess,” Lucien scoffed, looking off behind me with a jaded look at the backs of the faeries who abandoned him. 

I tilted my head, resisting the urge to fiddle with my fingers. I’d had a lot of restless energy since my power had been seized from within me. Just one of many horrific violations that had taken place Under the Mountain. “Pleased to know you’ve heard of me,” I said, slipping on my softest, silkiest grin. 

He made piercing eye contact with me, his lips pressed together in a terse, strained line.

“Funny though since I was actually just coming over to befriend you,” I told him, bobbing up and down on my heels. He dared a quick look in Tamlin’s direction, allowing me a glance of my own to where Amarantha was mindlessly chatting in the Spring Lord’s direction. He might as well be deaf; His face was devoid of any tells, no signs of life - happiness, sadness, fury, or sorrow. 

My mate was a hollow being, an empty creature. 

I would almost rather live through eternity with Eris over having any more of myself stripped away, sucked from my soul. I was too empty already to attempt to fill up someone else. 

“Interesting,” Lucien began, his voice a twisting snake, “because I heard that it was the males who sought you out to be  _ befriended _ .”

I kept my smile in place. “Well, since you never came I thought I’d save you the trip. Unless you’d prefer such an experience with someone like, say, your High Lord?” 

It hadn’t been too long since the last time a male’s hands were at my throat, so when Lucien lunged for me, his teeth sharp and bared, I was somewhat prepared. 

“You know nothing!” he growled out, his voice barely recognizable. He’d turned us around as he whipped me through the stale air, and despite being more than able to wrench myself from his grip, I could see Tamlin from over his shoulder. I could see my mate and though his features had not wavered from their frozen state, his eyes were on me. Lucien pressed me up against the wall, his body taut against my own, and no matter his threats or his facade, I could feel he was being too gentle. He was restless and putting on a show. “Why can’t you understand it is only the Night Court that wishes to whore themselves out?”

I rolled my eyes, which delayed my move to free myself giving Rhysand just enough time to tackle the youngest Autumn Court son to the ground. They rolled into a pile of limbs and guttural male fae noises.

I sighed. What would it take to make a real friend around this place?

“Hey, hey,” a heavy voice cut in. Then Eris was there, pulling Lucien away from the melee that was my brother. “Calm down, both of you.”

Rhysand’s eyes were crazed when they met mine. He’d lost his fine jacket since talking with the Court of Nightmares. His top button was missing, the thin thread dangling to the ground as if yearning for its lost host. I stepped toward him and he held his ground, running a quick hand through his disheveled raven hair that matched my own. And when I saw it, the look he gave me beneath all the tension of his face and his tight, trembling fists, I knew I had to get him out of here.

Eris was arguing with his youngest brother in a hush I couldn’t hear when I called out to him, “Eris?”

His head turned.

I reached out for my brother, wrapping my hand around as much of his bicep as I could. “I need some privacy,” I said, hoping Lucien wasn’t really paying attention to me, his complaints still rolling off his tongue in a jumble I couldn’t make out. 

Eris nodded and tossed me the small, black key to his room before turning back to his brother. 

I dragged Rhys away to the best of my abilities, but luckily, he wasn’t feeling very resistant. The other Autumn Court brothers came over to join the arguing after we’d left, drawing more attention to the scene that we originally had. A fact I used to my advantage when I spilled us out of the great hall in a whisper of night. We wove through hallways on two different landings before I unlocked the door to Eris’s room and yanked Rhys in behind me. 

In the quiet, I watched my brother, glassy eyed from too much wine, stare me down, as if some prideful part of him hoped we’d come here for me. That we had come here only because I wanted to, not because I didn’t want anyone to go looking for him in his own room. 

In the quiet, we stared. 

We stared at the children we once were, at the memories of training in secret until we were a bloody pulp and could no longer stand, falling into bed beside our mom in the Illyrian tents, memories of each Starfall when we shared one dance ever since I could walk, memories of him sneaking into my room to wake me up to fly through the night. 

And we stared at the beings we had transformed into Under the Mountain. I wondered every day how he could ever look at me the same way again - as he had when we were children making up sky games with Cassian and Azriel for hours at a time. How could he still see me beneath the scars, the savagery that had been imparted on me? I was coated in malice and turmoil, ripped apart by rage and shame. Destroyed from the inside out.

But then I looked at him and knew, he could still see me. 

He could still see me because I could see him.

He was wasting away, delivering his body to greatest evil we’d ever known - a slave to death and darkness all for the sake of our loved ones - the friends we hadn’t seen in nearly fifty years. His joy was waning, his strength - his all-encompassing strength - was dissipating, and his fire, that part of him deep down that willed him forward, pushing onward for everything that meant anything in this life, was burning out with every day like today, watching the girl whose name he delivered be skinned alive in front of him. 

But still, he was there. My brother, my best friend. My savior and co-conspirator. The most pure love I’d ever experienced had been freely gifted from his heart into mine and I grew into this self because of him - this very self that had somehow lasted this long in this hell. No curse, no amount of torture or abuse, no crime could stand in the way of that - of what he means to me. 

I’m not sure which of us shed the first tears, but I reached out for him desperately, clinging to him as the sobs racked through my body. He shook against me, his tears a damp weight on my shoulders, and I held him tighter, hoping that one of us had enough strength left to last just a little longer, hoping that an end would come for us soon.

Any end.


	3. Chapter 3

A groan rumbled through my chest at the immediate claustrophobia crushing down on me. I was rolled over, my front pressed into a familiar shape, but there were one too many arms around my body. With tangible effort, I peeled my eyes open to see the unmistakable jawline of my brother, my head at rest on the crook of his shoulder and one of his arms wrapped solidly around my back. But then there was another arm around my stomach, completely enveloping my waist, its fingers tucked beneath my hip and the mattress. 

I tried to roll away only to find a hard wall of muscle covering my back. I felt hot rhythmic breaths through the wild, sweaty hairs on my neck and let out a miserable sigh. The males were tearing me in half. I leaned onto Rhysand just enough to get a grip on the mattress on his other side to hoist myself up from between them, their grip on me pulling them toward one another. Every ounce of my strain was worth it when Eris and Rhysand headbutted beneath me, their eyes flying open, stunned, but quickly ready for battle. 

I laughed as Rhysand jumped up from the bed immediately, sending me tumbling back into Eris. My brother rolled his eyes looking between the two of us before turning to stomp out of the room. Eris wasted no time. He pulled me in from behind and traced hot kisses down my jaw, then my ear. I fell into him, letting his hands wrap their way around my waist before parting ways, one venturing up to follow the curve of my breast. Suddenly I was so heavy beneath his touch. His other hand slid down my stomach in a slow crawl, grabbing at the skirts of the dress I’d worn the day before, drawing them up and up and up until he could slip beneath them completely unhindered. He palmed my inner thigh, pulling me open for him, his other hand reaching for my far breast, using the hold across my body to heave me onto his waiting lap. Waiting, and ready. 

My neck was weak as my blood rushed south through sleepy veins. My head rolled back against his chest and he kissed along my open throat, his teeth grazing along my pulse. I shook, my blood awakening, growing wild within. His touched burned deep into my bones. I arched my back, riding on his ready cock beneath my uncovered ass as I reached my lips to his jaw, sucking my way down toward his chest until I had to turn to straddle him.

He welcomed the change. His lips found mine, full of menace and greed. My hands begged for him, the teaser of his presence beneath his underthings was not enough. His fingers wove through my skin, wading through my flesh like parting waves. After one swift smack against my ass, he cupped me in his palm squeezing his claim before falling back onto the bed. I rose on my knees and he slid off the last of his clothes, a routine we knew well. He held his cock up for me, waiting, but I reached down and took his place, desperate to feel the girth of, I had to admit, my favorite male who’d ever penetrated me. Holding him steady, I slid down on him, the stretching a soft pain I’d come to expect from my newfound lover.

Fuck buddy. 

Whatever. 

I started in on him with a slow pace, one of his hands still secure on my ass. The other palmed my lower middle, his thumb wide and calloused, the perfect size and texture to rub my every thought out of head. His finger danced on my clit and I rode him steadily, and then desperately. 

When we finally tumbled into oblivion together, my second visit of the morning, he held me on top of him for a moment too long.

He held me in place with his hands and his eyes and for some reason, I stayed. 

Too long.

I slid off of him, refusing to meet his gaze. I didn’t bother changing, instead snapping a finger and making tiny alterations to my current black sheath dress - one of those changes being cleaning it. In a few, hurried steps I was reaching for the door when Eris called my name. 

I hesitated, but turned around. He was still laying on his back, naked from the waist down. 

“This doesn’t change anything,” he said, and it was so much worse than if he’d ignored those too long glances. My thoughts fell into a place I’d forbidden them to.

To Mor. 

But I wouldn’t let myself linger. I wouldn’t let myself think about what I’d done in creating this tumultuous relationship with Eris or the way his eyes looked at me like I was more than just the dungeon whore my first few decades Under the Mountain. I couldn’t think about what I’d gotten myself into with the Heir of Autumn. I couldn’t think about  _ this _ male in  _ this _ way. 

I couldn’t let myself care about him.

I couldn’t care about anyone, anymore. 

I walked out of Eris’s bedroom without another sound.

The stone hallways were almost always quiet, a still reminder of the death that lorded over us all. We were herded here, lambs to the slaughter, idly waiting for our turn with torture to come. I’d lived through many glimpses of death over my centuries of life, and none compared to that first day with Amarantha. The day the Attor caught me. I couldn’t find Rhysand. I’d always been able to  _ feel  _ Rhysand, as if we had been born twins. But, this day, I couldn’t feel him, so I tore through the wind to find our mother only to be slashed from the skies, thrown to the solid snow below. 

I’d used the last of my magic to shove my wings into the abyss that we winnowed through, trapping them on the other side of an invisible door to another realm where they could be safe even when I wasn’t. 

I woke in chains, hanging in the place where Tamlin’s throne now sat, on display for all the High Fae in Prythian. 

It was a moment that replayed in my head every morning around this time, when I’d leave Eris behind in his room to descend deep into the mountain levels. I crept through the hall, channeling what little magic I did still have in case I ran into any trouble - something I wasn’t unfamiliar with. When I found the first set of stairs, voices came into hearing range at my back. I darted down them, my steps soft and pliable on the stone floors. There was never anyone on the floors below and as I took the next flight of stairs down, I ran my fingers through my long, wild hair pretending not to notice the knots that weren’t so easy to remedy without a comb. 

By the time I reached the dungeons, I’d tied my unruly mane into a swirling bun atop the crown of my head. This level was dark, damp. I was late compared to normal days, usually down here before the time we treated as dawn - another bad sign of the things festering between Eris and I. We’d taken so long this morning doing something that was once a quick hit and then we were on our way. I sighed, my lungs frustrated with the hot, heavy moisture. 

I followed the familiar path to the line of iron doors, some concealing small rooms and some concealing the prisoners inside them. Most were ajar and empty. It was surprisingly rare for anyone to actually be kept in the dungeons. The most common use seemed to be removing the drunk and disorderly from everyone else in the great hall and dumping them here to sober up. Usually those patrons were long gone by the time I’d begun my endless search.

The search for my mother.

My pace slowed. Ahead one cell door was closed. I came upon it breathlessly, afraid even the tiniest sound would alert the prisoner of my presence. The small cell window was open like all the others, the sliding door that locked them in darkness shoved aside. Steeling myself, I stood on my toes to peer through the corner of the rough hewn glass.

I’m not sure what I was expecting from the prisoner, perhaps another drunken High Fae, but I was definitely not expecting a human girl about the same age as the one my body settled in a few hundred years ago. Just the way her skin stretched across her bones made me fear for her. Fragile, so fragile were these humans. She was curled into herself, unconscious and bloodied. Beaten, no doubt.

I felt for her. The torture of the human girl from yesterday was still fresh on my mind and my own torture would never leave me, it haunted my mind every day and night. So I did something I hadn’t done once, not even once, in my entire forty nine years Under the Mountain. I released a sliver of my power. I let it slip through my mental shield to reach out to her. I would be quick and only gather bits and pieces. No need to linger in the mind of another.

Her thoughts, her feelings, hit me in waves.

The Attor’s grip on her arm.

_ Human filth. _

Time, she needed time.

_ I have come to claim the one I love.  _

From her neck dangled a single age-worn bone, the size of a finger.

_ Tamlin, High Lord of the Spring Court. _

Tamlin let them kill Clare like that to keep them from knowing she was alive.

_ Killing you outright would be dull. _

Three tasks.

_ I want his curse broken too! _

The Attor’s hiss was the only warning before something rock hard collided with her jaw.

I reined my power in, only a second’s worth of time lost. I pressed my back against the door soundlessly and my nostrils flared, concern twisting my features in the lone hall. Frozen… I was frozen. How could I possibly keep moving after knowing this? This human was  _ the  _ human. Tamlin’s human. She was the answer to the curse. She was the way out. And she… She was the human girl Tamlin loved. That my mate loved.

I shook my head. I’d never even spoken to Tamlin. I needed to shove this mating bond right up…

Before I could stop myself I turned, checking for any signs of motion in the hall on either side, and then opened the iron door. 

Its shrill creak had me on high alert, but there were no movements, no sounds, not even from the human crumpled on the floor of the far corner of the cell. This one was smaller than the one I’d been held in, though I’d always assumed that was because they’d made room for the cot in order for the visiting males to have options that didn’t always include bruising their kneecaps on the stone floor. 

In a bit of a stupor, I found myself bending to sit beside her, running my fingers through her brass colored hair. I crossed my legs beneath me and took in her damage to her jaw. Her nose was definitely broken. Blood marred nearly half her still body. I let myself seep out drops of magic from my fingertips, cleaning the blood knotting her hair and smoothing over any small open wounds. 

Her eyes wrenched open like rusty hinges that hadn’t been used in a century. My hand halted on her skin, and all thoughts washed from my mind. She pushed herself up, not yet sensing my presence. One hand rose to her cheek.

“My face…” she groaned, her voice achingly dry. 

I debated between speaking while so close to her and scooting away and decided on the latter. If, for some reason, she decided to lash out I would have room to evade her human attempts to harm me, and it also might be mildly less creepy and frightening. My skirts swished across the floor as I fled to the far wall and her head whipped toward me.

She panicked, flinging her body against the wall opposite mine. “Who are you?”

I weighed my options, but before I could act on my choice - running away - a new voice chimed in.

“Feyre?”

Her eyes were wild, only sparing a breath to look toward the open door. “Lucien?” she replied. 

I audibly huffed then wished I hadn’t. Their eyes shot straight to me. 

Lucien’s upper lip twitched. “Why are you here?” he spat, looking at me as if I had just been mauling Tamlin’s girlfriend. 

“Lucien!” I chirped, hoping to move this conversation elsewhere. “I am actually so glad to have run into you.”

He was unimpressed. “Run into me? I would hardly call whatever this is ‘running into me.’ I suggest you leave.”

“Is that a threat?” I countered, rising to my feet, keeping my tone nonchalant as I brushed off a bit of dust from my skirts. 

“I’d have thought after all your whoring days, you’d never step another foot down here.” Lucien remarked just as civilly. I commended his cunning.

Feyre’s unflinching stare did not go unnoticed by me when I said, “I was merely visiting and cleaning her up a bit. Apparently I missed her arrival, so we haven’t the pleasure of meeting yet.”

“You’ve no reason to meet Feyre,” Lucien said, growing bored with my presence. “Now get out.”

I looked to the human, holding her knees to her chest on the floor in front of me. “I think Feyre should be able to choose her friends.” Her eyes drew themselves to mine slowly, still afraid of me. “I would like to be your friend, an ally, if you will,” I told her. “I was healing your wounds and cleaning the blood from your hair. I was just about to wake you up to set your nose when you woke on your own.”

Her eyes bore into mine and I couldn’t tell if she was a fawn or a wolf deep down beneath. It made my offer all the more sincere. 

She looked to Lucien. “Can you set it?”

He nodded. “Absolutely.”

Looking back to me she whispered, “Thank you, but Lucien will help me now.”

I took a deep breath, my pulse racing as soon as I’d decided what I was about to do. Letting out one more wisp of power I sent her a single thought. 

_ You can call me through your mind if you ever need someone. _

I didn’t stay to cross my fingers that she wouldn’t expose me to Lucien and instead I brushed past him only to stop myself inches from his face. “I was trying to befriend you, Lucien. Yesterday. I was just trying to be kind.”

He made no move to respond.

But that was fine, I told myself as I left them behind, quickening my pace down the hall toward the few chambers I hadn’t yet searched. It was fine that Lucien would never trust me. It was fine that I would never have any entrance to the Spring Court. It was fine that I would never speak to Tamlin, let alone  _ be  _ with Tamlin.

It was fine. 

What was a mating bond worth really, anyway? My parents had hated each other eventually, mating bond and all. I didn’t need to know why my every instinct willed me toward the High Lord of Spring. I didn’t need to know why he’d fallen in love with a human. I didn’t need to know what made her so special - the  _ one.  _

I didn’t need to know her at all. 

And yet, I still left open one sliver of my mental shield, one specific slice meant only to wait and listen for the cry of the human girl my mate loved. 


	4. Chapter 4

I should have found Eris after my fruitless hunt through another catacomb of prison cells. We were making things so messy and I needed to know my spot in his bed was secure, lest I rejoin the cages endlessly woven beneath the rock below. I should have found Eris, but I was feeling restless. Things were beginning to change Under the Mountain. Tamlin was finally here and now Feyre... Hope was bubbling in my chest, but it was a vile beast curdling with my years of festering hate and disbelief. 

Instead I decided to entertain myself in the great hall with a few High Fae nobles from other courts. 

And wine. Lots of wine.

“And so,” I said, tossing out a flippant hand, “the general had to shave down his hair to the scalp!” They all laughed around the table, their eyes slipping down to the sheer fabric between the lace of my black dress. “How could you blame me, though?” I tossed my newly washed hair over one shoulder. “I mean, I was only seven!”

“But such a devious seven year old,” one male said, from Day, I assumed from his finely tailored robes. His eyes met mine, sparkling like topaz in the sun. 

I shrugged and fed him a smile larger than I’d intended, the faerie wine prickling my senses. “What can I say? I suppose I’ve had a way with men my entire life.”

They laughed again and this time my smile was terse. It was a joke, but to them, a truth. They would look at me and say I was charming, lovely, and perhaps ponder the idea of taking me to bed since I was so freely accessible to them. For them, my slavery was beguiling. 

The smile faded. 

“Adria, you must tell us what it’s like to have such a monster for a brother,” another male  sitting right beside me said, this one from the Dawn Court. His hair was a pale ash of a blonde, nearly glowing even in the fae lights that lit our tomb of a ballroom. He shifted in his seat often and could never find a place to keep his hands. Restless energy. I could relate. 

“Ah, but those stories are the true horrors,” I told them, letting the secret smile leave them wanting to know each and every incriminating tale from the Dark Lord’s past. The funniest part of it all was that Rhysand was the good child, had always been. I was the menace, the feared. But now I was a magnet, full of charisma while Rhys was exiled, his presence spat upon. 

I needed to find my brother. 

“Excuse me,” I said in the most polite voice I had and rose to my feet. I turned to leave but the Dawn Court Fae grabbed my wrist, holding me in place.

“Oh but you must stay,” he goaded, the pressure of his grip tightening. “You haven’t even finished this glass of wine.”

I tried to remember how many I’d had.

A soft tug on my arm told me he wasn’t taking no for an answer. I held in my sigh. “You’re so right,” I said, channeling myself into the small blurry feeling from the wine. I took my seat and the males shared a glance.

The third male spoke for the first time since I’d joined their party, “Were your duties within the Night Court similar to your duties now, princess?” 

I’d mastered every muscle on my face long ago for moments just like these. Moments when I could barely help myself from reaching across the table and clawing his eyes out. Or maybe letting my mental claws reak all the destruction, tearing apart his mind one piece at a time. 

The other males laughed, egging him on. “I’m sure with the way you look, even the Dark Lord himself has gotten a taste from time to time.”

My nostrils flared, but I only lifted my wine to my lips swallowing the entirety of its contents in gulps. 

They hollered with laughter, patting knees and stomachs as if it would release some of the fit from within. 

“Noblemen,” a voice said behind me. They all choked on their chortles at the sight of the owner of that male voice. “Thayer,” it said in warning. 

Somewhere deep in my belly I felt the echo of his fine baritone, but fear paralyzed me. There was no way he could be here. No way he’d approach me. No way he would leave the throne aside Amarantha. 

“Yes, my Lord?” the third male replied, and it was only then that I noticed the dark green tunic he wore. 

A knuckle brushed my shoulder as I felt the male behind me step to my side. An accident, I told myself hoping I’d consumed enough wine to be drunk enough for this. 

“Do you not know how to speak to a female?” the High Lord asked. “Or are you really so pig headed as to believe a noble lady wants to be spoken to like a whore?”

He shook his head frantically, his face turning a sheen of pink. “No, my Lord.” The other males were silently eyeing retreat. 

“No you don’t know how to speak to a female or no you’re not a pig headed asshole?” Tamlin countered. His tone left no room for laughter, but I couldn’t help the small huff that shot through my nose. 

“Um,” he fumbled, “no, my Lord, I-”

“Shut up, Thayer. I once respected you.” Then the High Lord of the Spring Court stepped into my view. “Adria,” he said. His voice made my name sound lavish. “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of meeting, though I do know your brother somewhat.” 

I tried to think of something clever to say, but his eyes were so green, so full of life. So unlike the way his eyes had looked as he’d sat upon that dais for days now. 

Whether he was aware of the crackling bond between us, clawing at my chest, desperate to reach out to him, I wasn’t sure. But when he held out a hand and said, “How about we talk in private, away from these heathens,” I couldn’t help but hope.

There was that word again.

My hand almost seemed to move of its own accord, sliding into his seamlessly. His touch lifted me from my seat, guiding me through the now crowded hall. Dinner would be served soon and everyone was gathering for it, talking amongst themselves before the nightly off-kilter music began. I didn’t see Rhys or Eris, which I felt was a good sign despite the trouble I could see them both getting into. Although I suppose I was one to talk.

I didn’t dare look toward the dais to see if Amarantha was there. 

If she was watching. 

The High Lord led me to one of the corners along the wall opposing the throne, not once looking over his shoulder, a feat considering the roaring fear I felt at the eyes boring into my back. 

“I’m sorry about that,” he said finally, leaning his back against the stone. His shoulders fell a little more in front of me than they had on the dais. He looked so tired. 

“Sorry?” I asked, moving to his side, mirroring him against the wall. 

“Thayer is a prick,” he laughed, though it came out more like a groan. And when he raised his hand to run his fingers through his long, blonde hair I noticed the mask for the first time since seeing him up close. It was beautiful, but comic. How had I missed it before? The memory of the bold green of his iris lit visions of towering forests and tender gardens, fueled and cared for by the magic inside him.

Oh yeah, that.

“They’re just being themselves,” I responded, cursing myself for defending them the second the words left my lips. 

His head turned to look at me, his tousled hair falling as he moved. “I wouldn’t make excuses for them,” he said, and suddenly I was so self conscious. How was it he could build me up and strip me down within a moment or two? “I don’t want to start to think it’s okay,” he went on, “to become like them.” His chin dropped his gaze to the floor in front of him. “If I’m being honest, I’m terrified I’ll become a monster down here.”

“We all are,” I told him.

Food was being delivered by magic and lesser faeries in front of us. I dared a glance at the dais and Amarantha was mysteriously absent. I’d found Eris by his hair on the farthest side of the room from us, but no sign of Rhys yet. The dread that clogged my throat at both he and Amarantha missing was overwhelming. 

After a few deafening silent seconds I couldn’t help but end it.

“So Feyre’s here,” I said, as if it were the most casual thing I’d ever said. 

He didn’t waver. “She is.”

“She loves you.”

He looked at me. He looked at me and his face told me everything I’d needed to know before he’d said a word. “I… I suppose she does.”

I was approaching a line I couldn’t return from, but I decided to blame it on the wine as I barrelled through it. “And you love her?”

I watched as his eyes clouded with emotion, pain and adoration. “I do.”

I focused on my swallow, letting precious time between us be tossed away with his admission. I imagined what it would be like to love someone. Whether it would feel like the vast, unending well of feeling I felt for my brother or the infinite, reverent admiration I felt for my mother. But to truly love someone with mind, body, and heart… 

“I think I do,” he whispered, and my heart shattered somewhere beneath the cold, hard exterior I’d spent fifty years building up one piece at a time. 

I had nothing to say, nothing inside me. He’d stolen my heart, reached down my throat and tore it from within the cavern of my chest with those four words. 

Hope. He’d given me hope. 

A valiant, treacherous thing to do. 

He waited through my silence until we both noticed the sound of Amarantha’s devilish voice echoing down the corridors leading to the great hall. 

We gave no goodbye when he walked away, blending in with the crowded fae. I watched as he retook his place on his throne just as my brother left her side. I watched his eyes fade from that vibrant, wistful green into a hollow place and I couldn’t help but feel that they were merely a reflection of my own. 


	5. Chapter 5

 

Rhys wasn’t exactly happy to see me when I approached his empty table toward the back of the great hall. 

“Should I be worried about how often you drink alone?” I quipped, hoping he’d bite back. He twitched his lip, but otherwise I was utterly ignored. “Fine, well, you’re getting company whether you like it or not.”

The far off look in his eyes wasn’t something I’d been prepared for when I’d followed him through the crowd back to his usual table. He wasn’t wearing the mask of the Dark Lord. His mind wasn’t elsewhere and he wasn’t performing a magic of any kind. But his face was remote - tragic. 

“Did something happen with…” I trailed off. If something really had happened with Amarantha the last thing he would want to do is talk about it. 

But he answered anyway. “I just wanted to be able to sleep in my own fucking bed tonight.”

“Oh.” I looked away through the chattering faeries around the room. Hundreds of us always crowded into this massive space. What I would give for some fresh air. Eris caught my eye despite the many faerie faces between us. He’d already been watching me, his expression so similar to the one I’d left behind this morning. 

I turned back to my brother. 

My fingers tapped in my lap with leashed energy. I needed to exercise or something. I was going stir crazy inside this giant rock. Lesser faerie attendants started to make their rounds and I waved one with a wine tray over our way. I took one glass, already envisioning the way it would magically refill when I was done with it.  The queer, unnerving music began to fill the room around us and off somewhere a few faeries would actually dance to it.

“Why the fuck were you with Tamlin?” He still wasn’t watching me, instead looking off into the distance, perhaps to another realm, another world unlike this savage one.

“Were you spying on me, brother?” I asked, avoiding telling him about the mating bond. I knew if he pressed at all I would spill every detail about the pull in my heart and mind that tethered me, even now, to the High Lord of the Spring Court. I had to put up  _ some  _ kind of fight.

His eyes flew to mine, feral blue in the magic lighting. “You know she saw you? You know that she saw  _ him _ with you?” He took a long swig of his wine, a drip sliding down his chin as he tipped it back until he’d finished it. He slammed it on the table and wiped his face with a sleeve. The glass refilled instantly. “For fuck’s sake, Galadria she could  _ kill  _ you for that!”

I threw my hands flat on the table. “Don’t use my full name like you’re our father!” I spat, holding in my writhing anger. 

He nearly growled. “Don’t ever compare me to him.”

I rolled my eyes, masking my building tension. “Well, keep your voice down. Have you been drinking already? Or do you really not care how many High Fae hear about our personal lives in a place where any one of them would turn us in if they could?”

He calmed at that, his breath easing into a natural rhythm, but his eyes still bore straight through me, not yet satisfied with my avoidant responses. “What would they have to turn us in for?”

I sighed and gave a small shrug, preparing myself for the barrage of what might come out of Rhysand’s mouth after I confessed. I’d had a hard time keeping it to myself anyway.

“Tamlin is my mate.”

All the blood drained from his face and I really thought he might faint. Whatever I’d been expecting from him, it hadn’t been this. He was deathly still, his glass clutched between his fingers and I hoped he wouldn’t shatter it. I’d always known he didn’t like Tamlin and they’d had strained relations at best, but this… 

The hate that pooled in his eyes, twisting his face into something devious, demented that I’d never seen before.

And then it was gone, just as quickly as it had come. In its place was pain. Pain and fear. Emotions easy to spot Under the Mountain, as it was everywhere I looked. 

“How do you know?” he asked, his voice tight.

I took a deep breath and looked around the room restlessly, pretending to myself I wasn’t looking toward the dais for strength but out of boredom. Tamlin was there, his mask in place. Amarantha was twitchy beside him, fidgeting with her bone necklace and I nearly gagged at the thought of Jurian’s eye on her finger. “I don’t know,” I said idly, turning back to look at him. “I just  _ know _ . It snapped into place the first time I saw him and then he looked at me and I don’t know,” I shrugged again and hoped he wouldn’t look too far into that. “But I know he is and I know that he feels it too.”

Rhysand looked ready to vomit or rage across the room to declare war upon Spring despite our courts being relatively meaningless here. “But Feyre,” he said with a familiarity that surprised me. I tucked that thought away. 

“Yeah,” I said, “we talked about her.”

“You’re kidding,” he said and I couldn’t help my tiny smile. He sounded almost like he had all the times we sat on the roof of his house gossiping about whoever I had new intel on that day. For a second it felt like we were home. 

But that second ended too soon. And we most definitely were not at home. 

“No, I asked him about her.”

Rhys chuckled. “A little direct, are we?”

“It’s a little distressing when you speak to your mate for the first time the day a girl claiming to be in love with him shows up to save your life.”

“True,” he said and even gave me a small grin of his own before letting out a large sigh. “Tamlin?” he asked, as if it pained him to say his name. “Really?”

“I guess so.”

“Fuck. Do I have to be friends with him?”

I gave him a stern look. “Absolutely. I expect nothing less than brunch every Sunday and that he be invited to the annual camping trip. He will be the father of my children after all. Fate has decided it.”

He shook his head and spat out a breath of a laugh, his face falling. “You know she can’t find out about this. She will torture you. You saw Clare and now she’s planning long, drawn out games to kill Feyre recreationally and she only thinks she’s a random girl in love with him. If Amarantha found out you’re mates… She would kill you. She would kill you slowly and she would kill me too because there is no way I could just sit by and watch you die.”

The upbeat conversations that chorused behind us were a stark comparison to the stiff, pregnant moment we sat in, staring into each other’s souls, trying to comprehend the danger we were in because of this immortal thing we did not ask for. 

“It’s the helplessness,” I said to him, taking my first drink of wine, “that bothers me the most. I’m fine with accepting the consequences of my own decisions and I’m fine with the idea that shit things happen from time to time. But this…” I paused, choking down every memory from the dungeons along with the rest of my wine. “I struggle with the helplessness. I can’t help myself. I can’t help you. I can’t even find our mother, let alone help her. I feel useless, out of control, and I hate it. I hate every second of this.”

My glass refilled and I took another swig, inwardly scolding myself for pouring out my problems. Rhys had enough of his own, he didn’t need to worry about mine too. But I knew he would, even if I’d never once spoken up about what I’d gone through. I knew he heard the rumors and I knew he saw the toll it took on me. I knew he knew me at my best and he could see all the signs of the worst self I was becoming. 

He took a drink, too.

“I can’t let anything happen to you,” he said. “Nothing else. No more.” He looked toward the dais and my eyes followed to where Amarantha was rising from her seat, ready to make an  announcement. “That’s my worst fear,” he continued, his eyes still on our captor, “that something happens to you and I can’t stop it.”

I took a deep breath and reached a hand across the table. His hand swallowed mine just as Amarantha’s cackling voice filled the room.

“Bring out the girl! It is time for her first task.”

And then, on cue, we heard the monstrous roar of a beast I couldn’t believe Amarantha had gotten her hands on. 

A slow, terror spilled across his face. “Is that a Middengard Wyrm?”

I nodded. “She’s going to die instantly.”

“Wanna bet?”

 


	6. Chapter 6

I owed my brother money.

For a mortal, Feyre was bizarrely strategic. She looked at things differently, coming up with the idea of trapping the wyrm in its own leftovers. The bone trap she laid was genius, one I wouldn’t have been able to rig in a million years. Even with a broken arm, she persevered. Even with hundreds of immortal beasts watching her face death, she won.

I was a little bitter about it, if I’m being honest. Of course the human my mate loved would be pretty _and_ talented. But even with that mindset, I couldn’t hate her. I stood beside my brother in the crowd, his attention enraptured in the trial below us. Meanwhile I snuck glances at Eris, who’d given me plenty of space today. An abnormal amount of space. And then there was Tamlin. I looked over to him multiple times, my curiosity getting the better of me.

But this last time he was looking back at me.

He held my gaze for only a second, if that, and turned back to watching Feyre approach the edge of the hole she’d been dropped into with the Middengard Wyrm. I wondered if she noticed the way he looked at me, or that his lips made a quick quivering motion when our eyes connected.

Probably not.

The fae cheered. Tamlin and I were two of the three who remained silent. Even Rhysand let out a loud whistle through the crowd. But when I looked to Feyre, her grip tight around a femur bone, drudging her way toward where Amarantha sat, quiet and still, I knew something was about to happen. The human was shaking, not with fear but a boldness. Every time I tried to not like this girl she shoved my feelings right in my face.

“Well,” Amarantha said with a little smirk. “I suppose anyone could have done that.”

Feyre took a few running steps and hurled the bone at Amarantha.

It embedded itself in the mud at her feet, splattering filth onto her white gown, and remained there, quivering.

The faeries gasped, and Amarantha stared at the wobbling bone before touching the mud on her bodice. She smiled slowly. “Naughty.”

    The girl looked like she would lunge for Amarantha’s throat if she hadn’t been stuck in the wyrm’s pit. I looked to Tamlin again, only to see him respond to my gaze without moving his head before flashing his bright green eyes back to Feyre.

    Amarantha’s nostrils flared.

    “I suppose you’ll be happy to learn most of my court lost a good deal of money tonight,” she said, picking up the piece of parchment I knew had Rhysand’s handwriting on it as he’d scoured the room for participants before Feyre had arrived. I expected her to call out the winners, who I assumed was only Rhysand, always the advocate for the unlikely. Instead, she curled up the list of betters and tossed it over her shoulder where one of her lesser faerie servants recovered it and disappeared to wherever I assumed Amarantha had intended for them to take it.

    “It’s interesting to me,” she started, leaning forward in her chair. “How I can put this girl in love with you in mortal, life threatening danger and yet you remain frigid, dear Tamlin.” She drew herself back into the chair and raising her bone finger to scratch an imaginary itch on her shoulder before resting it on Tamlin’s knee. “Here she is now, broken and bleeding in front of me. I could hop down and squish her, end her life, and you wouldn’t dare breathe too loudly.”

    My breath began to rise and fall faster and faster, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of the way she was posturing to my mate or because she spoke with that slow, cruel tone she uses before something very, very bad happened. I looked to Tamlin only to feel my brother’s grip on my arm, pulling me away from seeking out my mate. He pulled me behind him and I didn’t argue.

    Tamlin hadn’t moved an inch, though his face was ghostly pale.

    “I wouldn’t have thought much of it, High Lord of Spring, if I hadn’t seen you break that gaudy apathetic mask beneath your cursed one. Maybe,” she paused, her gaze boring into Tamlin who did his best to look passively beyond her, despite the way his fingers were flexing on his arm rests. Something pulled tight beneath the skin of his knuckles and I almost thought he would unleash claws on her viciously beautiful face. “Maybe I’ve got the wrong girl?”

    If Rhysand hadn’t been holding onto my hand I’d have thought I’d fainted.

    Tamlin’s lip twitched ever so slightly and I begged him to have a mistress elsewhere in the court. I begged to the Mother and the Cauldron that she wouldn’t mean me. That she wouldn’t know of the mating bond. I begged and pleaded for this to be a mistake.

    I couldn’t handle to be broken any more than this.

    “Rhysand,” Amarantha called through the crowd. “Bring me your sister.”

    My head was light, the room swirled around me.

    Rhys clutched onto my hand like a lifeline.

    We did not move.

    “Rhysand,” she said again. “Now.”

    I clung to my brother and he wrapped his arms around me, uncaring for any of the many fae who turned to stare at us.

    Amarantha’s smile was slow, wicked. “I thought this might happen.” She shouted through the room to unseen guards waiting on a signal. “Bring her.”

    And then, through the glassy vision beyond my tears, I watched one guard bring in my mother. Her hair was unkempt, gray with soot and dust hanging in vines around her face. She was frail, thinner than I’d ever seen her. I pushed against Rhysand, ready to crawl to her if I had to, but he did not waver. He held us in place, unwilling to commit to any of her games.

    “Now then,” Amarantha said once the guard had hauled our mother to her side. “I will bargain with you. Bring your sister to me, Rhysand, and I will free your mother. She may return to the Night Court immediately.”

    Nothing prepared me for Rhysand to say, “No.”

    No.

    He hadn’t even hesitated.

    “Okay then, how about this?” she said, her voice like a disturbed backwards song. “Bring me Adria, her life not to be ended, or I will slaughter your mother right now.”

    My brother did not move.

    _Please,_ I said to him, opening my mind to him for the first time since we’d been Under the Mountain. _Please, just do it. I’ll be fine. Feyre’s here. It’ll be over soon and we’ll all go home together._

He didn’t answer me, but he finally moved. We walked together as the crowd of whispering faeries parted for us. His grip on my arm ached through the bone and every step he took was a palpable pain I could feel echo through my chest. We walked slowly, until we stood directly before Amarantha. Directly in front of our mother.

    Directly in front of Tamlin, whose mask was falling. His eyes pinched with worry and his breaths heaved through his chest. I pleaded with my eyes for him to stop. Stop reacting. Stop caring.

    But I knew, I felt it too. My soul, my body… It was connected somehow. The bond drew us together and there would be no way for me to sit emotionless and watch him suffer.

    I attempted to be okay with that.

    “Good.” Amarantha purred. “Now hold her down.”

    Rhysand merely stared at her, caught between the carefully woven lies he’d built for decades and his allegiance to me. Fear clawed at me from within, like a living creature ready for me to let go and give in. Ready for it to take over my body and consume me.

    “I’m growing bored, Rhysand. Mentally bind her to her knees.”

    I fell to my knees of my own accord, not daring to look toward my brother. Not daring to reveal his rebellion.

    “Good,” she said. “Now, Tamlin, you do know if you wanted a whore’s fuck I could have given you anyone you wanted. No need to pillage with this one. She’s been passed around for decades before finally being bought by Eris.”

    At the sound of the Heir to Autumn’s name Tamlin flinched.

    “Oh even better!” Amarantha practically sung. “Eris, come here.”

    I thought of his face this morning when I’d left him, that face that promised too many things I couldn’t bear to look at it. I thought of the way he’d always twirled my hair until I woke every morning. I thought of the way he held me while he climaxed, like I’d been something he cherished. I thought of his cruel jokes, one for every High Lord including his father and the way he’d made me laugh. But it always came back to the first time he’d visited my prison cell.

And brought his three brothers with him.

His footfalls were heavy in the stagnant air behind me. I could feel his presence anywhere after all the times he’d had his cock inside me.

I wondered if Feyre was still watching from the pit. If she was lost in her own humanly world, wondering if her true love had betrayed her for a faerie, unconcerned with me as anything more than a whore.

“Eris, your loyalty and general depravity has always made you a favorite of mine,” Amarantha said to his towering presence behind me.

“Yes, my liege.”

I hated him. I hated every fiber of his being, every bone in his body. If I could mist him, if I had my power…

Then Amarantha said, “I want you to burn her.”

All the soft whispers of the crowd fell immeasurably quiet. The only sound was the drumming beat of my heart, thrashing in between my heaving lungs, pounding in my ears.

I pictured Eris arguing. I imagined his disapproval. And some part of me I’d never accepted hoped he would stand up for me in that moment.

Instead I felt the searing pain of fire crawl up my spine, melting my flesh in its wake.


	7. Chapter 7

My dress sizzled as it melted into the skin of my back. The fire serpentined up my spine, slithering with excruciating slowness between each and every vertebrae. There was screaming everywhere, a piercing female scream.

My scream. 

And then there was another - deeper, like a roar. 

From the corner of my whited out vision I saw Rhysand lunge toward me, toward Eris, when a wall of power slammed him back, pinning him to the ground. I tried to reach for him, but my muscles were gone beneath the pain flooding every vessel and sinew in my body. I was caged, helpless. Eris had trapped me here, in my greatest pain - my greatest fear.

He’d freed me only to destroy me eternally, to bind me in torture. 

Somewhere beneath the surging well of electric pain I felt my power building with rage, begging to be released, but I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t grasp it. I couldn’t wield my own strength.

I was helpless. 

The fae at my back disappeared in my mind as the flame that grew closer and closer to my neck took up all my attention. Small pools of blood rose around my fingers where my nails dug into the rock below. If I was breathing between my deafening screams, I couldn’t tell. 

“Oh, Eris,” I heard from another female voice. It was so familiar, but felt so far away. “I really think she was beginning to like you.”

Eris didn’t speak.

“Tsk tsk. Really Tamlin --” but then the voice was cut off.

And then the fire stopped. 

I collapsed from my hands and knees onto the cold, hard floor, sure that the impact would leave me with blood on my temple. But as the agony of my exposed back quieted ever so slowly, I saw the brawl behind me. 

Tamlin was on top of Eris and sure enough, he had claws. He’d sliced across Eris’ cheek so deep, he’d surely be disfigured forever. To the side, Rhysand was rising despite the wall of magic still visibly pushing him back. His face was crumpled into a hateful grimace, veins popping from his neck and forehead as he rose until something snapped and he flew to Eris. 

“You’ve got to be joking,” the voice, Amarantha, said rising from her seat. “She is worthless and you’re willing to go  _ this  _ far for what? Her honor?” Her nostrils flared, a scowl warping her once beautiful features. “I will  _ kill  _ her. She is  _ NOTHING. _ ”

And then Tamlin and Rhys stopped attacking Eris. They turned together, the most unlikely team I’d ever seen, and faced Amarantha. Fury lit their faces, their rage palpable. The surrounding fae were silent and some had even begun to near the exits. The two High Lords’ steps were slow, intentional. Neither looked very shaken by Eris, as if he hadn’t even bothered to fight back. 

Amarantha cackled, a cruel, wicked noise that echoed through the great hall. She opened her mouth just as Tamlin launched himself at her. She threw out her power, slamming him into the rock right when Rhysand came close enough to strike her before she tossed him aside as well. She raised a hand above her head, a sadistic smile spreading across her face as she turned her gaze to mine. 

A force slammed into me.

Amarantha, I was sure. She was going to kill me. I was going to die here, at the feet of a monster. But the force wasn’t magic - it was solid. Then a second blow hit and I realized it was a body. Someone had covered me from a blast, their presence a savior and a torture as their clothes buried into the open flesh of my back. 

“I’m going to  _ KILL YOU ALL!”  _ Amarantha vowed, shouting her voice loud enough for every fae Under the Mountain to hear her vow. She took quick, pounding steps toward where my brother stood in front of me and only then did I realize it was Tamlin who held me. Tamlin had saved me from Amarantha’s wrath. She steamed ahead, drawing up one hand, ready to unleash death upon us. 

I braced myself. And for a moment, despite the pain, I let myself press into Tamlin. Somewhere deep beneath my burns, the mating bond was soothed in the furthest, most unreachable regions of my poor, broken heart. I could have almost smiled. If I were to die, I would be glad to have the privilege of dying in my mate’s arms. 

_ But I bless all those brave enough to dare…  _

The whisper in my head was so small in comparison to everything around me I almost didn’t hear it at first. 

But then I heard it again. 

_ But scorned, I become a difficult beast to defeat…  _

My panicked eyes met the self righteous glare of the evil commander as she neared Rhysand, a twisted snarling smile on her face.

_ For though each of my strikes lands a powerful blow,  _

_ When I kill, I do it slow… _

Rhysand stood his ground, even when Amarantha’s hand suddenly appeared around his throat. 

“Love!” a long forgotten voice screamed.

Amarantha’s eyes grew wide. 

“The answer to the riddle is love!” And I realized it was Feyre, the human girl watching us from the pit. The girl in love with the male who held my shaking body. 

Something fell onto my head.

Tamlin’s mask ricocheted off my hair, still somehow in its bun, and fell to the floor beneath us. He stood, peeling himself from my now mostly naked and bloodied body and launched himself toward Amarantha much faster than he had before. 

But she was gone. 

She’d moved too quickly.

Too quickly for us to stop her when she reappeared in the pit, face to face with Feyre. 

“ _ You _ ,” Amarantha spat and Feyre’s screaming began. Her bones distorted underneath her skin. Her ribs became jagged and her legs folded back and forth, yet still she stood. Blood was beginning to spill from her lips as she struggled for breaths. “ _ I’m going to kill you. _ ”

Tamlin ran for her.

But he wasn’t fast enough. 

Amarantha’s hands were barely visible, they were so swift as they reached for each side of Feyre’s face and broke her neck in front of us all. 

Her lifeless body dropped to the ground, blood flowing freely from her mouth pooling around her face. 

“NO!” To my surprise, it was Rhysand who yelled, running toward the pit. However Tamlin was already there.

And he had transformed. A wild beast possessed his body, golden light spewing from his pores. 

Warm, he was so warm. 

And I was so cold. 

“Please,” Amarantha whispered before Tamlin attacked, pinning her down with his massive paws. She fought for her life, only for him to take her throat between his powerful animal jaws and rip out her throat. 

Just like that.

Amarantha was dead. 

And then I watched my mate run to his dead lover’s body, scoop her up, and beg all the other High Lord’s to save her life for freeing them all. I watched as Feyre was resurrected as fae with the attention of my mate and my brother fixated on her. I watched as she emerged from death, as she stood up with not a scratch on her. Their magic had cleaned the blood from her, healed her wounds inside and out. She was stronger than ever before.

And I was weak. 

Weaker than ever before.

I was destroyed, yet I would not be rescued, or resurrected. 

I watched faeries of all kinds fuss over the human savior from my place on the floor in front of the dais, still bare from the waist up after Eris destroyed my dress, though some fabric had likely been burned into my skin. The pain was still there, still wild and all-consuming. My body was thrashing, shaking uncontrollably, unable to handle it all - all my pain. My brokenness. 

It was too much. 

It was all too much. 


	8. Chapter 8

 

 

When I was finished feeling sorry for myself, I looked for my mother only to find her, along with the Attor and Amarantha’s other cronies, missing. I was still shaking as I pushed myself up from the rocky ground, pain stabbing through my back. So much pain that I was worried the wounds were too deep. Torture was a familiar act Under the Mountain, one I wasn’t a stranger to, but this felt worse than even my first torture, strung up like captured carrion ready to be gutted and skinned. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind this would scar. No, I was more concerned about whether I would live.

Would I still be able to fly when I pulled my wings back through the void I’d thrown them into?

My magic swelled through my blood, bringing a new strength and resilience that had been lost to me during Eris’ burning. A resilience that would have been handy for the last forty nine years. Power that would have been a sweet gift during so, so many times I’d needed it. 

But I didn’t want to relive those times anymore. I didn’t want to relive the many times I’d been stripped, beaten, or raped. I didn’t want to look back into the black hole that was Under the Mountain. I didn’t want to come face to face with who I’d been here. 

I looked over to where Rhysand was still watching as Tamlin held Feyre in his arms. Tamlin kissed his human lover, over and over. Tears flowed down his cheeks with the joy of her life as she smiled up at him in an exhausted stupor. Rhys was beginning to back away from the scene just as other faeries were starting to disperse and make plans for what to do now. I told myself Rhys was backing away to come to me, though I’d seen the look in his eyes when Feyre died. I’d heard him screaming when Amarantha attacked her. His reaction was even stronger than Tamlin’s had been, and while the High Lord of the Spring Court was murdering that psychopath, Rhys was mourning over the human girl. 

He might not be as forthcoming as I was with him, but I saw what was right in front of me. And if I were right, then the Night Court whores were both screwed. 

I stood on wobbling legs and clenched my jaw as I forced strength to still them as I walked slowly over to the nearest wall. I reached it with my hands out, ready to take any pressure off my shocked muscles as possible. I practically hugged the stone, leaning even my face against it. With a sigh, I snapped my fingers down at my sides and replaced my destroyed dress. I bit back a shrill, sharp yell at the contact of the fabric on the wounds of my back. 

“I still don’t understand why you have to snap every time you use magic like that,” a voice said, coming up behind me. I didn’t bother turning to look at him.

With strained effort, I said, “Dramatic flare.”

Rhys chuckled, but it was a dry, empty sound.

I pushed off the wall slowly and faced him. “Don’t act so innocent. You and I both know it’s a family trait.”

He started to smile, but saw me sway on my feet and his brow instantly furrowed. “Are you okay?” He reached out to me, putting a hand on each of my shoulders. When I shook my head, holding back all the emotions I’d locked away inside, he said, “I’m so sorry. I hated the guy, but I was honestly starting to believe he was in love with you.”

My voice was like a stranger’s. “Me too.”

“We’ll get him back,” he vowed to me, his violet eyes meeting my matching ones. “He will pay for what he’s done to us.”

I tried to nod, but my vision was clouding, tunneling, and I felt myself sway again, but this time too much. I fell into my brother, who wrapped his arms around me, only applying more pressure on my still open wounds. A black wave of pain rolled into me before I heard the first half of my own scream.

 

 

* * *

 

 

My eyes were heavy. The world of sleep tasted so sweet on the numb part of my dreaming mind. But no matter how hard I tried to force myself back down beneath the tides of unconsciousness, still I woke. I recognized my room in Velaris instantly. There was a fresh vase of lilac flowers on my side table and all the picture frames I’d chosen as my favorites over the years. A glitzy, golden circle framed a staged shot of Mor and I in wildly expensive gowns the day we’d crashed a hollywood party only seventy years or so ago. A deep navy rectangle held one of my favorites, a candid of me sitting between Cassian and Azriel on the couch downstairs. Cassian had just told a ridiculous story about how a girl at Ruby’s had completely, and quite embarrassingly, rejected him and the whole room was in a fit of laughter, even Cassian. And then there was a smooth, white square frame that housed a picture Rhysand had taken of us. The camera was too close to our faces, not even showing our heads, but our faces were smooshed together and smiling. 

I grinned just looking at it, knowing he had an identical copy of it in his own room. 

Slowly, I rolled onto my back ready to summon the strength to get up and start my day when I realized many things all at once.

I was back in Velaris. From Under the Mountain.

My back wasn’t in excruciating pain as it should be after rolling over onto it. 

And in bed next to me was an Illyrian warrior I hadn’t seen in forty nine years. 

I flung myself on top of his sleeping form, wrapping my arms around him, tears stinging my eyes. He woke with a jolt, bringing us up into a sitting position, almost pushing me away but my hold was unbreakable. And I watched his now open eyes wake and realize what was happening.

“Gally, you’re okay,” Cassian murmured, squeezing me right back.

I smiled into his shoulder, ignoring the wetness I knew he could feel against his skin. “I hate when you call me that.”

He chuckled. 

And then we said nothing, but did not break our hold.

Not until the french doors to my room flew open and my other Illyrian stepped through them. I leapt from my bed and ran into Azriel’s arms, something I probably hadn’t done in at least two hundred years, but he seemed to welcome the embrace. 

My brothers. What I would have done to have had them with me Under the Mountain. I could picture Azriel repaying each of my tortures, hunting each male down one by one and destroying their bodies and their lives one by one. I could feel what relief it would have been to have had Cassian by my side, fighting for my protection from anyone who dared approach me. These boys were my safety. They’d been my guardians all my life and suddenly I felt overwhelmingly clingy, ready to spend every moment possible with them, never leaving their sides. I told myself I would be strong, as strong as I could be. Yet I knew I would stay as close to Az and Cassian as I could for a long, long time. 

When I finally let go, I made my way to my lavender colored reading chair near the window on the far side of the room. “Alright guys,” I said. “Tell me everything. What did I miss?”

They stared at me for too long.

They stared at me with pain and pity and it broke what was left of my heart. 

My eyes fell to the ground. “Guys,” I whispered, “please… Just talk to me. Like normal.”

I could hear Azriel’s huge intake of breath. 

But it was Cassian who stood from the bed and said, “We can’t just pretend everything is normal with you. Rhys hasn’t told us much of anything since he brought you back. We don’t know hardly anything about what happened there.” He walked over to me and grabbed my hand, pulling me up from my seat, and though Cassian and I had always been physical since we were kids, wrestling, fighting, biting, slapping, flying, and eventually working out together, this felt so tender, so vulnerable that it was threatening to unravel me. He tugged me into his arms and I tried to hold myself together until I felt the sob clamour through his chest. “When I found out she’d taken you…” Azriel came up behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I will never forgive myself, Gally.” His voice wavered, giving way to his spilling feelings that crashed from his lips straight into me. 

I thought he was the one who started weeping. I thought he was the one who was shaking. I thought I was holding him up. 

But then I heard him, “Shhhh.”

And I realized I was crying. 

Feeble once again. 

This time I let myself break. I let the tide of everything that had happened to me overtake me and swallow me whole. 

Because unlike all the times I’d cracked and broken and wasted away Under the Mountain, I was safe here.

I was home. 

 


	9. Chapter 9

It was a while before I settled down. We’d all moved to sit on my bed and I was grateful for the sturdy oak of the king sized frame. I leaned my head back against my purple silk covered headboard.

“What has my brother told you?” I asked softly, looking from Cassian at my side to Azriel at the foot of the mattress. 

They shared a glance. Cassian swallowed before turning to me. “Nothing, really.”

“We healed you,” Azriel cut in. “But when we asked what happened to you Rhys only said he would tell us later.”

I looked the Shadowsinger in the eye. “Who was in the room when he said that?”

Their brows furrowed and nostrils flared. Cassian shifted where he sat and I could see the red alert going off in Azriel’s eyes. 

“The whole Inner Circle,” Azriel replied. “Mor, Amren, and us.”

I knocked my head back against the headboard again and sighed. “That’s why he didn’t say anything.” I paused, hoping to the Cauldron that one of them would miraculously change the subject before I had to start rehashing any Under the Mountain events, let alone the most fresh - the most painful. “It was Eris. Eris was burning me alive at Amarantha’s command.”

Cassian stood abruptly, knocking a journal from my nightstand. “We’ll kill him,” he proclaimed.

I rolled my eyes, despite the depthless passion I felt toward his protectiveness. It was a trait I’d once been desperate for from my father only to find it in my brothers. One of the many things about these Illyrians that touched me down to my bones.

“No,” I said, well aware of Azriel’s unwavering stare. “Not yet.”

I waited as Cassian’s chest hammered in harsh, heavy breaths until finally calming into rhythm before he sat back down beside me, but his heat was palpable. He ran his fingers through his long hair restlessly and pulled out his strip of leather to tie it up and out of his face. Something he only did when he was looking for a fight. 

“Why Eris? Was he just that witch’s torturer or did she seek out flame specifically? What was there to gain from him?” Cassian asked. 

I put my face in my hands and tried to rub away images from my last morning Under the Mountain and the look on Eris’s face as I tried to leave our room. “It’s much more complicated than that.”

I felt his anger then, coming at me like tangible waves of energy, and I realized he was also facing one of his greatest fears by talking to me about this. We were openly discussing our helplessness, something no Illyrian was suited for. If we were in each other’s places, it would be hard for me to keep from shaking information out of Cassian until I knew every last soul I would be removing from its bodily host. 

Still, I had to keep my head in my hands to tell them. “I had been sleeping with Eris.”

There was a pause and then, “Are you kidding?” Surprisingly, from Azriel. 

I shook my head, still in my hands, sinking lower into my lap. The idea of explaining to them that I was Amarantha’s dungeon prostitute until Eris saved me made me dangerously nauseous. 

“Adria,” Az said quietly.

“That’s why Rhys didn’t even want to bring up the subject around Mor.”

Cassian slid closer to me. “But he burned you,” he said, his voice soft, but clipped. 

I took a steadying breath and ignored the tears spilling from my eyes. “Under the Mountain was torture,” I said, almost to the blankets only, my voice a cracked whisper. I’d sunk so low, my posture crumpled and my back a defeated curve. “Every day Rhys and I were tortured. And…” I choked on the words and grasped for breath as it all rushed through my mind all over again. “And Eris saved me from my torture for a long time.” I looked up, seeking Azriel’s kind, distant eyes to cling to instead of Cassian’s that I knew would be full of crystal clear, blazing emotion. “I almost trusted him. I didn’t know he would turn on me. Everything just… It just all blew up out of nowhere. And then Amarantha was dead. I must have collapsed from the burns. I don’t remember coming home at all.”

I could hear Cassian’s throat bob in the silence as he swallowed back everything I’d said. 

“We should have helped you,” Azriel whispered. 

I looked from him to Cassian and back. “I wish that would have been possible.” And I let myself lean over on Cassian shoulder, only for him to reposition his arm around me, pulling me close. “I know you would have saved us both if you could have. You have nothing to feel guilty about.”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t.” Cassian said into my hair, draped like black velvet over my shoulders. 

“I know,” I said. “And I’m okay with that, but Rhys won’t be.”

They both nodded just as my doorway filled once again. 

And at the sight of my best friend, I unravelled another time, something I wasn’t sure would ever end anymore. 

Mor walked into the room glowing in a deep blue dress and I was swallowed by how much I loved her and by how much she will hate me when she finds out the truth. 

She dove onto the bed, joining Cassian in holding me as I wept. 

“Shhh,” she cooed. “You’re home, Adria.” She brushed my hair out of my face, and I held onto her. “I’ve got you, babe.”

Nothing had ever felt so tainted, so disrupted and wrong in my entire life. Not one fuck with Eris made me feel as disgusting as crying on Mor’s shoulder after everything I’d done. 

I pushed them both away and stood. “I…” I stammered, looking between my loved ones empathetic eyes but only feeling the weight of filth I’d become. “Where’s Rhys?”

Mor looked down, a frown on her lips. “He went to the House of Wind.”

“What? Why?” I said quickly. My brother was off alone, probably drinking himself to death. I started moving, but Mor grabbed my wrist holding me in place and suddenly I was back Under the Mountain. Back at the table with the High Fae, laughing at me and my brother, calling us whores and incestuous, waiting for the perfect time to pluck me from the great room to rape me in secret. 

I yanked my hand away and screamed, “Let me go!” 

All three of my closest friends balked at me. 

Mor’s frown deepened. “Adria, I’m sorry.”

I shook my head. “Rhys shouldn’t be alone right now. Why would you let him go alone?” I spat and ran from my room turning toward Rhysand’s. I had to see for myself that his things were untouched. That my anchor was gone. That I was without him.

Relax, I told myself. He’s alive, just alone. 

I felt their fear in my wake, concern for what I had become Under the Mountain, as I ran down the stairs of the townhouse, glad to see that my strength had returned completely. Their whispers of my talk of being tortured barely a sound as I opened the front door and stepped onto the Velaris street. Children were playing in the road a few blocks over and fae were walking to and from their homes in this neighborhood with happy, easy going smiles as they chattered amongst each other. A new ache rose in my chest at the sight. It was blissful to see that Rhysand’s sacrifices had paid off. That our people were safe and thriving despite the disasters Amarantha had imparted on the rest of the continent.

Yet I ached inside. At their calm. Their easy joy. 

I ached knowing I might not ever feel that way ever again. 

And then the memory of fire lacing my spine like an eternal corset flashed through my mind and I choked on a sob. 

But I shook myself from it, instead looking to Velaris. I was safe. I was home. 

With a quick breath, I pooled my magic, reaching for my wings until the familiar weight settled onto my back. I stretched the muscles, rolling my shoulders. A new pain was there, my fragile healing skin. 

I’d look at my newest scars later.

Within a few heavy beats, I was airborne. 

And I ignored the tearing feeling along my spine all the way to my brother. 

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Author's Note: I wrote this to "Dynamite Acoustic version by Sigrid" on repeat.**

* * *

By the time I'd reached the cabin dangling from the side of the snow covered mountain we'd known about since we were children, I was doubting every decision I'd ever made. I'd crumbled in flight, both wanting to turn back to my friends, my family, and to find my own cabin elsewhere so I could also be totally alone.

But to be alone would be to die, surely and slowly.

From the inside out.

And it would start in that deepest part of my broken heart, that part of me that died Under the Mountain. It was the part of me that had learned to participate in cruelty, to use my body for survival, and to lose all sense of conscience in favor of staying alive.

It was a brokenness I knew my brother felt deep down as well.

And that's why I stayed my course until I was face to face with the old wooden door that held my brother behind it. I didn't bother knocking, seeing as Rhys would already know I was coming from miles away. It gave into my touch and I stumbled inside, desperate to warm my tender wings.

Rhys was seated at the dining room table facing the stove. I joined the chair at his side and saw the large crystal bottle of amber liquid in the middle of the table. He didn't look over to me as I sat and summoned a glass cup to match his from the cabinets into my hand. He released a heavy sigh and poured us both a tumbler half full.

The glowing warmth of the whiskey filled my hollow chest and I was grateful for steep alcohol that wasn't faerie wine. I needed something stronger. Stronger than anything that happened Under the Mountain. Something stronger than the years of degradation. Stronger than my hours spent hung from the great hall or naked beneath those not of my choosing. Stronger than every tear I'd banished from my eyes while in that stark hell. Stronger than the endless ache I saw when I looked into my brother's eyes. Stronger than Eris's flame. And stronger than the tug in my gut that reminded me I had a mate in love with a human.

Rhysand poured me another glass. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. With two fingers, he rubbed his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. "I feel like," he started, but paused to finish his glass. I idly wondered how many he had while finishing my own in heavy gulps. "I feel like I don't belong in Velaris anymore," he said finally, his voice cracking.

He was crumbling just like me.

I tried to think of what powerful, encouraging words Mor would give him in this moment. Or maybe the way Amren would kick his ass for saying that or the jokes Cassian would tell him to force him from his slump. But this was not just a slump.

"I hated the way my feet fell on the front steps of our townhouse. The second I saw the sun shining and heard laughter - real, actual laughter…" I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth, suddenly needing to twist the long strands of my cold, damp hair. "I was glad to be flying in so much pain through the sleeting snow of the mountains to find you. I was more comfortable killing myself out here alone than to bear the openness… The warmth."

His face was twisting, rolling and roaring through emotions and I felt the weight of heavy on my chest. "I just want to be okay," he whispered.

I moved my chair over next to his, pulling my refilled glass along the way, and when we were side by side I put my head on his shoulder. "It will take time," I told him as he set his head on top of mine. "And I don't think we will ever be the same people we once were… But these wounds will heal. We will become something else."

"I've let them all down," he said, his voice a small tear in the silence.

"No," I said. "If there is one thing that I'm sure of it is that you've saved them all. Velaris stands because of you."

His hands reached for mine. "But I couldn't save you."

My eyes fell shut. "Maybe," I paused sucking in a breath. "Maybe I was meant for this fate."

I could feel his face twitch above mine. "You were never meant to be raped and tortured for decades."

"But I found my mate."

He scoffed a laugh. "You want me to believe that all the things we went through was just for a mate?"

"Do you still feel her?" I asked, threatening our closeness. I hoped I hadn't crossed a line.

He stiffened, but said nothing unwilling to give me information I did not already have.

"I know she's your mate. I know we both found our mates Under the Mountain and I know how it pains the males more than the females to be separated from their mate. You could have claimed her then, you know?"

He lifted his head. "I'm not going to force the bond on someone."

I gave him a questioning look.

"She's in love with him. I can't just rob her of that."

The quiet surrounded us again. I wasn't particularly excited to ponder what my mate might be doing right now with my brother's mate, but I couldn't ignore the tug in my chest, the need going unmet.

"What do you think Tamlin is going to do?" I asked finally.

He turned to meet my eyes. "I'm afraid he's going to hurt her beyond repair whether or not he claims you. And I am terrified he will claim you, break you, and take you away from me."

I put a hand on my brother's face. "Rhysand, I cannot be any more broken."

His forehead fell onto mine softly.

"They're here," he whispered so softly it was only a breath.

A gentle knock sounded against the old wooden door before it opened hesitantly to reveal our inner circle. Our friends. Our family. Amren shoved her way through the Illyrians until she was a few steps from me and for the first time I could think of in fifty years, a genuine broad smile stretched across my lips. I stood and approached her slowly, holding back the flood of emotions I'd surely suffocated the others with. She took the last few strides and engulfed me in the largest hug I'd ever seen her participate in.

"Amren," I sighed. "I missed you."

She said nothing back but squeezed me tighter before finally letting me go and taking a step back to give me some space.

I turned and looked to Rhys. "I want to tell them everything. They can help us."

I hadn't noticed how ruddy he looked, his eyes red and face splotchy. He looked to our friends and cast his eyes down before giving me a nod.

I looked to the others, but before I could launch into our story I noticed a roll of parchment in Mor's hands. She saw my attention and looked to Azriel before meeting my gaze. I didn't have to say anything before she approached me, the letter in her outstretched hand.

"This was delivered to the Court of Nightmares."

I took the letter in my hand as Rhysand stood behind me, coming to read over my shoulder.

_High Lord of the Night Court,_

_I invite you and your sister to my home for a visit in your honor in hope of an alliance after all these years. If you wish to bring others, notify me before your arrival._

_High Lord of the Spring Court_


	11. Chapter 11

In all my time Under the Mountain I never once imagined really coming home. From that first strike as I flew through the Night Court mountains to find my brother, I knew that I was taken from my previous life. And maybe that’s why I had fallen as far as I had. 

Hopelessness can drive even the pure hearted to a dark place.

Not that I’d ever have really considered myself to be pure hearted. I’d had my demons long before they caught up to me beneath that rock. 

I held the parchment for too long, refusing to look up to my friends. I felt my mind loosening, opening up to my brother’s behind me just as his did the same. Maybe this is why we’d always felt more like twins. I let myself open up to him as our thoughts melded together into one mind with one thought.

How will we ever be forgiven?

When everyone knows the truth, when they all know of our abuse, that which was forced and that which was granted… When they all know who we had aligned ourselves with and who we now felt compelled toward… How would we still be one unit? Where would we go from here?

The idea of telling Mor…

My chest heaved at the weight of Rhysand’s grief. He was to lead these people. To know what’s best for them and to light the way. How could he do so when his light was all burned out?

The tears stung my nose before prickling my eyes. 

Azriel’s eyes were the first to notice, concern crinkling his brow. “What does it say?”

Even the idea that they hadn’t already read it, instead waiting for us to see it first… 

The unworthiness dripped into my weighted chest, thick and slow. 

I dared turn to Rhysand only to see a face made of stone. I reached up with both hands, grabbing his face without thinking about being gentle or discrete and pulled his eyes down to mine. And there, deep in the shadows of his violet eyes, was my brother. He sucked in a breath, holding my gaze.

Mor and Cassian took steps toward us, but stopped themselves before being close enough to reach out a hand to our shoulders. 

I didn’t blame them. 

“We’ve been invited to alliance with the Spring Court.”

I pursed my frown and let go of my brother’s face, letting him make eye contact with Cassian who took that as an opening to take the last step toward us and put an arm around my shoulders. I counted my breaths to hold in the sudden panic - the feeling of being too close, being unable to escape. 

“Oh?” Azriel said.

Amren rolled her eyes. “We shouldn’t give that blonde bastard a minute of our time.”

“I can’t believe he would even reach out to you,” Mor added. 

I tried not to notice how no one would say his name. 

Tamlin.

My mate.

“We’re going,” Rhys said simply.

Everyone stared at him like he’d grown a new head.

Cassian pulled me a little closer and I concentrated on keeping my breaths in a rhythm. “We’re going with you,” he said and the others practically nodded their heads off.

“No,” my brother said, “We’ll go alone.”

Mor’s eyes bore into Rhys, begging him for something silent - something I admit I was tempted to go on the hunt for despite never having broken that trust with any of the Inner Circle. 

“Like hell,” Cassian bit out, releasing me from his grip and I nearly gasped for air. Guilt snared my throat at my own reaction to his comfort. “We just got you both back.”

“We’re not letting you leave us again. Not undefended.” Azriel said and though I love him for it, I was aching to be alone. The same ache reverberated from Rhysand’s open mind back into my own. 

Cassian looked down at me, waiting for my comment - my opinion - but just this once, I didn’t want to have one. Just this once I wanted to be small and I wanted my brother to take care of everything. I wanted to hide behind him. 

And just like that, he reached for me and I nearly ran him down for his embrace. I focused on my breathing, keeping myself under control and the tears at bay. I’d cried enough today for the next hundred years. I was tired of it.

I was tired of everything.

“We don’t have to decide now,” Mor said behind me. “We have time.”

I wanted to turn around and apologize. I wanted to relive the good times, to tell stories from the days of dancing at Rita’s and kicking Cassian’s ass training and the boys teaching me to fly when I was little so I’d survive at the camps with the rest of them. But instead all I could think about was the chains of the dungeon beneath the mountain, like they were chains on my heart that would forever hold me back from the love and friendships I once held so dear. I was a shell of that person now, always moments away from cracking and I hated myself for it. 

I clung to my brother, wrapping my entire essence around him, all my magic, my identity, everything I was and could be. I clung to him terrified that I wouldn’t be able to stand in this new, free world on my own. 

I couldn’t be who I once was. 

And then I felt a small tug. 

I lifted my head. 

Rhys was already looking down at me. He’d felt it too, through my open mind and shared power.

It tugged somewhere in my chest again, calling out with a hesitant pull, questioning, wondering. 

The bond. 

I thought back to telling Rhys that maybe it had been fate that sent me Under the Mountain with him. That maybe I was meant to be there to find my mate. 

I grit my teeth and tugged on the bond before turning to our friends, our family.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, though my voice only came out in a small whisper. I could see them all holding themselves back, ready to jump in to comfort me and I held on to that moment. We could do this, Rhys and I. We had the support. We could be ourselves again, or at least whatever was left of ourselves. “I-” I started, but choked on the words. Taking a deep breath, I powered through. “I think we both left pieces of ourselves behind Under the Mountain and,” I swallowed and reached for my brother’s hand, “it’s going to take some time to understand who we are now… But we love you. All of you,” I said, looking directly at the steel strength in Amren’s eyes. 

Mor immediately came to me, pulling me into an embrace that rubbed the shattered pieces of my heart deeper into my soft flesh. 

“I slept with Eris,” I blurted. 

I’d expected her to drop me like I’d scalded her. I’d expected to feel the ice of her abandonment and to watch her storm out of the cabin, pushing past Amren and Azriel. I’d expected disgust on her face and everyone else’s.

Instead, she readjusted me in her arms. Tension built and I thought I might snap, clawing my way out of her grasp, but then, I relaxed. She held on. She didn’t let me go.

And despite my new hatred for crying, I wept. 

“We’ll sleep on this invitation and figure out who will be going in the morning,” I heard Rhys say from behind me, his voice cracking a time or two. His hand rested on my shaking shoulder before I felt him turn away from us all. “I’m going to bed.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say after my brother, but I sent him the waves of emotion pouring from my bleeding heart, welcoming him into the warmth of openness. 

He kept walking until he’d reached a bedroom in the rear of the cabin and shut the door. 

“I’m so sorry,” Mor whispered as Amren made her way into the kitchen to find a seat. “I’m so sorry we weren’t there.”

I sucked in all the air I could fit in my lungs and backed away. “It’s no one’s fault but Amarantha’s.” I moved to the table where Amren sat, mine and Rhysand’s glasses empty next to the bottle of dark liquor. Mor and Azriel followed behind me, taking seats on each side of Amren, across from the chair I was taking my time pulling out to sit. I saw the question burning through Amren’s eyes, but I knew she would never ask it of me. 

What happened to us?

Cassian walked right past the table into the kitchen and pulled out the smallest glasses inside the cabin before taking the seat on my right, leaving Rhysand’s seat empty. A part of me hoped he’d be mentally listening in and come join us. 

Cass set the shot glasses in front of me and looked at me for permission. A swift nod from me later and the whole Inner Circle reached for a glass. Mor took her time filling everyone’s glasses and a part of me smiled at my friends. Maybe I’d just always been a show off, but typically I did all these things with magic for them. It felt somehow sentimental to have them all doing it for me, with or without the magic.

Once we all had our shot, I raised my glass to the center of the table. My arm shook, but I held steady despite feeling both weaker and stronger than I’d ever felt in my centuries of life. The glasses of my closest friend’s clinked against mine and Cassian’s arm found its way behind my chair, ready to shoulder my frailties once again. 

“For freedom,” I declared. 

And we all took our shots in a quick gulp only for Amren to refill them. 

I shot mine back first before reaching for my hair to loop it up and over one shoulder. “They hung me when I first arrived. I’ll spare you too many details, but I was left there for the first few days after she’d captured me just for the sake of humiliation for both me and my brother.” Cassian refilled my glass and then his own, the amber bottle now being passed back and forth across the table. “I haven’t seen a mirror for as long as I was down there so I don’t know of all the scars the Attor left those first few days. I was moved to the dungeon then.” I took my shot, letting the fuzziness creep inside my mind. “I stayed down there for years,” I couldn’t help my pause before I said, “getting visitors. The men would come at their leisure, in groups if they wished. It blurs together, honestly. I didn’t see Rhys for the majority of my time Under the Mountain.”

“He didn’t,” Azriel started. “He didn’t visit you?”

Cassian refilled my glass again. 

“No, it would have done more harm than good. He would speak to me though, in my mind, even though I never replied. He would will men to bring me food on their visits. He kept me alive even when I was done living.”

I ignored their faces and took my shot, letting my mind slip into the liquid driven stupor. 

“Eris was a regular and eventually he paid Amarantha to release me. I still don’t know what with, but I belonged to Eris from then on. I lived with him the last decade down there…” I sucked in a breath and reached for the bottle to pour my next drink myself. “We had to ride a thin line when I was released - Rhys and me. We could be close, but not too close. Too close would push Amarantha to punish us by punishing me. Making Rhysand helpless. More helpless than he already had been to that bitch for forty years. We knew it was only a waiting game. She would choose to separate us for good at some point, but she was patient with her torture. We bought our time. It was never so bad.”

I took my drink at the same time as Amren and something warmed in me knowing she probably didn’t even like the taste of the alcohol. I wasn’t sure it would even affect her, but she didn’t even cringe the way she always does when one of us relishes in regular food. 

“In the end, well, Tamlin came. And,” I paused, suddenly more fearful of my friends learning about the High Lord of Spring than anything else I’d shared. “Amarantha found out he’s my mate.”

Mor nearly dropped her drink. Cassian’s arm dropped off my shoulder and I would never admit how cold I felt without him.

“So she told Rhys to bring me to her, to torture me and Tamlin together, and Rhys wouldn’t. She brought out our mom and threatened to kill her. I still don’t know where she is now. Off with the Attor somewhere, I assume. I turned myself over to her but Rhys attacked and then there was a big fight. Tamlin and Rhysand fought Amarantha and they were…” I blinked away the memory. “They were losing until the human girl… The human girl in love with Tamlin broke the curse. It all happened so fast.”

Their jaws might as well have been on the floor, their hearts in my poor, feeble hands. 

“So Amarantha is dead?” Azriel asked, breaking the silence. 

I wondered if Rhys had literally told them nothing when he brought me home. I nodded. “And she killed the human girl Tamlin loves, but the High Lords came together to restore her life to her for saving them all. She’s fae now.”

“And with Tamlin?” Mor asked. 

I nodded.

“Mates?” Cassian balked, his eyes looking beyond me. 

I nodded again and unconsciously felt for the never ending tug in my chest. 

“So what you’re saying is we’re  _ all  _ going to the Spring Court for this visit,” Amren stated. “No way we’re leaving you two alone in such a volatile situation.”

I let out a soft breath and nodded for the hundredth time.

“I guess so.”

And then Amren refilled our glasses once more and we took our final shot of the night. 

 

___________

 

Azriel and Amren had already planned to head back to Velaris for the night and left to my own chagrin. Cassian practically had to pick me up and hold me away to let them fly off into the frigid wintry darkness after drinking so much hard liquor. I mean, sure, Amren was some sort of undead  _ other  _ but she was still in a mortal body and could get drunk, right?

I wasn’t sure. I’d seen her drink on special occasions with us before but had never actually seen her drunk. 

As for Azriel, I could never bring myself to openly claim he wasn’t capable of anything in any state, but I was worried for him nevertheless. 

Mor took one of the vacant bedrooms in our enchanted cabin and though I offered my room to Cassian, he refused it, instead choosing to sleep on the couch. I hadn’t planned to sleep alone in my room tonight. I hadn’t even really been tired until the alcohol dulled my senses, lulling me into a numb, restless place that begged for sleep. 

I approached my brother’s room slowly, unwilling to send out my power to sense his consciousness, something I had been victim to for most of my life. I depended on Rhys reaching out to my mind, but would rarely reach out in return. Something about intruding on my older brother’s privacy hurt one of the still whole places in my heart. With one last glance at Cassian’s back on the sofa from over my shoulder, I turned the knob and entered the dark.

He was in bed, the blankets strewn haphazardly around him barely covering one unclothed leg. I hadn’t expected him to be quite so… naked. Thankfully, he’d left on some slim undershorts, though I couldn’t help the piece of my mind that felt it was for my sake. I always felt like he was watching out for me. 

My now bare feet fell on the wooden floor lightly, afraid to stumble across something I hadn’t known was there. Literally. But as I reached out a hand for where I knew the king sized bed would be, I felt Rhys move. Silently, I moved the edge with the most room and slid my weight onto the frame gently before pulling the aged quilt from the foot of the bed up to my waist and rolled onto my stomach, letting my wings sprawl out behind me. 

I could feel him. His mind. His breath.

He wasn’t asleep, but I’d never tell. 

I held back the need to reach for him, to stabilize myself with his presence, to hold onto his presence as a reminder that I was not alone anymore. I was not Under the Mountain. For the first time in forty nine years, I was falling asleep feeling safe. 

I only hoped Rhysand felt that way too. 


	12. Chapter 12

I woke the next morning to the bed shaking beneath me. Sweat glistened across the arm I’d rested my face on as I slept on my stomach, wings still stretched over the large bed. The sounds of soft whimpers slowly crawling into my mind until I finally peeled my eyes open to the gentle blue light of dawn in the mountains barely spilling in from the ice crusted window. My black hair was a stark contrast against the pale sheets under my palms as I lifted myself to sit, stretching my wings from their sleep. 

It took too long for me to realize Rhysand was by my side. 

Shaking.

Whimpering.

My hand flew to his shoulder, desperate to reach him wherever he was in his mind, to bring my brother back to reality. One swift flex and magic whipped me from the bed, flinging my aching body to the floor in a loud crash. The door flew open in seconds and Rhysand jerked awake, searching the room for the roucous. 

“What happened?” Cassian said from the doorway as he took in the scene.

Rhys turned to face his best friend. “I don’t know,” he said plainly, the innocence and fear in those three small words filling the room.

“I had a nightmare,” I confessed and made to get up only for Rhys to crawl from the bed to my side, pulling us both to our feet. 

Once, nearly a hundred years ago, Mor asked if Rhys and I were always mentally communicating in a string of thoughts that never ended, our powers always tethering our minds to one another. At the time it had been a strain to explain the way we worked - as if we were mentally one, and yet, we rarely needed to use words, inside our heads or not. It was as if we just perceived the world the same way, or perhaps, so greatly understood the other’s perceptions that we reacted for each other. 

It was a bond I didn’t take lightly, one I wouldn’t ever be able to live without.

Flashes of the dungeon cell, of all the times Rhys had reached for me, begged me to accept his offerings of memories wafted through my mind - the music of the rainbow and every off key song I would scream sing as I forced the Illyrians to walk with me to the furthest cafe in Velaris, the time Rhys and I kicked Cass and Azriel’s asses and Az had to braid Cassian’s hair as a punishment, all the long nights spent planning and theorizing in the living area of the townhouse, whether it was for a diplomatic appointment or whether Mor wanted to chop off her hair short.

No, Rhysand and I did not speak silently as daemati all throughout the day. How we communicated… it was much more than that. And in this moment, I knew that he caught my lie and I knew that he didn’t understand why I’d done it.

He didn’t remember his nightmare. I let that fill my heart as a small victory before pushing my brother away.

“Could you put a shirt on please? And tomorrow night pleeeeease sleep in some pants,” I whined. 

Cassian scoffed a quick laugh.

Rhys had the audacity to reply, “Actually I was a little toasty last night. I’ll probably start skipping the briefs.”

I made a gagging noise and moved toward the door, evading Cassian’s worried glances as I made my way to the kitchen. Times like these I wished I could winnow to and from the cabin. And though I thought it, I knew I wouldn’t have left Rhys and Cassian even if I could. Something about being alone after all those years…

I dug through the cupboards until I could find something to make myself for breakfast, finally settling on some basic baking ingredients. I poured myself a glass of water before taking a seat at the kitchen table where our glasses from last night sat empty all but for the sticky residue, the bottle of alcohol completely dry. With a few quick thoughts, I set my power to cooking for me while I sipped my water. I was definitely dehydrated after waking up so late yesterday, not to mention all that crying and liquor. I chuckled to myself. First day of freedom and it was almost like I was trying to kill myself anyway. 

“What’s so funny?” Rhys asked as he came to join me at the table, Cassian close behind taking in the sight of breakfast making itself in the lone kitchen. 

“You don’t want to know,” I told him. I’d intended to drink my first glass of water slowly, but I was starving for it. A trail of liquid dripped down my chin as I tipped back the last of its contents. Rhysand snapped and it was refilled instantly. “So dramatic,” I drawled, rolling my eyes. 

“Guess you’re rubbing off on me,” he countered.

I huffed. “How rude.” And though I tried to hold my features in a pout, a small smile slipped through. 

And then I felt the familiar tug in my chest. 

I wondered if every tug was Tamlin off in the Spring Court with his lover somehow thinking of me when he looked at her. I wondered if it was each time Tamlin felt the guilt of leaving me behind for a mortal girl. I wondered if, perhaps, it meant anything at all. 

I wondered, sometimes, if I meant anything at all. 

I felt a different tug then, this one pulling my mind and my eyes shot upward from where I’d zoned out on my glass of water. Rhys was looking straight at me with those big brother eyes and I tightened my mental shield.

Not all the way though.

I’d never lock him out completely ever again.

“We should head back to Velaris before Azriel loses his patience and flies all the way back here,” Rhys said.

Cassian nodded before taking a heaving bite of a fruit he’d taken from a decorative bowl on the counter by the stove. “Sounds good,” he mumbled as he chewed. 

I shook my head in mock disappointment and he shrugged before showing off a proud, mushy smile. 

I made a face before bringing the finished breakfast cakes over to the table all divvied up and on plates for each of us. I filled a bowl with a rich, thick syrup and mentally brought it over to sit between us all just as Cassian took Amren’s seat across from me. At my side, Rhys rolled up the flat pastry and dipped his first bite into the sugary goo before stuffing it as far down his throat as he could and then Cassian did the same.

“Barbarians,” I whispered before rolling my own cake and smothering it in syrup.

It took me a few heartbeats too long to realize Cassian was not fidgeting with his brow, but instead sending me quite the vulgar gesture.

I clenched my teeth and waited for his next dip before slamming his hand down in the thick syrup.

“Hey!” he shouted above the sound of mine and Rhysand’s laughter.

“Learn to take a joke,” I quipped, offering the sweetest smile in my arsenal before finishing up my breakfast.

“At least the syrup wasn’t too tainted after your paw drowned in it,” Rhys said as he chewed on his last bite, before cleaning up our mess with the same magic I’d prepared it with. 

“You guys are terrible to be alone with,” Cassian mumbled.

Confused, I asked, “Where’s Mor? I thought she spent the night too?”

I pretended not to notice the strained breath he took before replying, “Yeah, she stayed a while but took off a few hours ago. Something happening in the hive’s got her stressed, I think.”

Rhys nodded, taking in the information as both a family member and our leader. “We’ll have to visit soon.”

My heart dropped at the thought. It would be a long while before I was willing to go beneath a mountain again, especially in the Court of Nightmares. I could picture each turn and tunnel, the original behind the replica that was my hell.

Rhys touched a hand to my shoulder. “We can plan that later. Let’s get back.”

I sucked in a breath and nodded, reaching for the thread that linked me to the stranger across the continent. Tamlin tugged back not even a second after I reached for him and my chest swelled. 

Feyre’s lifeless body flashed through my mind.

Stupid. 

I was being stupid, careless. 

I didn’t deserve a mate. I didn’t deserve a fairy tale or a happy ending. 

It was too much to strive for, to hope for.

Instead I squashed the fluff built in my gut and stood. My brother watched me with careful eyes, always watching, always protecting - something that a century ago I would have yelled at him for, but today… today I would let him watch me with those big brother eyes. Today I would let myself follow in his wake and reach for his steady presence. Today I would cling to each piece of my broken self, but today I would survive. 

I would survive each day of freedom the same way I survived each day in captivity. 

“You ready?” Rhys asked me, his shoulder pressed against my own at my side. Cassian walked ahead, opening the front door to the snow covered porch where he stretched his wings in the harsh winter winds before leaping from the mountainside. 

I considered telling him no. I considered collapsing into the frail, defeated creature that lived inside me.

But I dipped my chin in a swift nod.

I watched my brother fan out his wings in a graceful swoop as he fell from the edge of the front porchway. It took everything in me not to shut the door behind them and crawl back into bed. I resisted the urge to reach for the mating bond that I was ready to evict from my chest.

Instead, I took a running start and dove into open air. 


	13. Chapter 13

I honestly tried not to take it personally when Azriel showed up to the townhouse with the news that Mor would be staying behind on our trip to the Spring Court. Deep down I knew it was unlike her, but I told myself that her role had changed while Rhys and I were Under the Mountain. Her responsibilities had grown so it made total sense that she had some sort of drama happening in the Court of Nightmares that she had to stay behind and resolve.

It definitely wasn’t because I’d told her I slept with Eris. 

“Ready?” 

I turned at the sound of my brother’s voice, a tethering noise. His feet were light as a feather as he descended the stairs of the townhouse we shared. Well, technically this was his townhouse and mine was at the end of the block, but I’d long since moved across the hall, prepared to annoy my brother until the end of time with my eternal presence. 

Cassian and Azriel were leaning on the breakfast bar in the kitchen sipping on coffee, otherwise known as the devil’s drink, though they would both argue with me over it for days. I prefered tea, much like the honey sweetened cup I now held in my hands. 

I nodded to Rhys before turning back to the open window where I watched our bit of Velaris still sleeping through last moments before dawn. A lone bird sat atop a neighbor’s roof, bouncing along the tiles in search of a few nibbles of food, but then it chirped a soft song into the brisk morning and I knew what it was really searching for.

Its mate.

I let out a deep sigh before swallowing the last of my now lukewarm tea and rose from the fine leather couch littered with my pillows and throws that sat adjacent to the front door. 

“I don’t know, I think Talla’s doing well with the new legion,” Cassian said to Azriel as I walked into the kitchen, passing Rhysand who had just grabbed a bagel from the cupboards and magically toasted it. 

Azriel shrugged in answer. “I worry he’s not a strong enough leader. They’ll get the best of him.”

“They’ve gotta start somewhere,” Cassian replied, turning toward me as I neared the sink at his side.

“Oh, thanks,” I said when he grabbed the mug from my hands and took to rinsing it. 

“Let’s team Talla up with Hanna. A few months of drills with Hanna’s legion and Talla’s crew will be kissing his feet,” Rhysand added before taking his last bite.

The front door opened and we all turned just as Amren slipped inside, her hair its typical perfection and her clothes their typical color - grey. 

“You animals are so slow,” she groaned, nevermind she was the one running late. 

But we all knew not to correct her. 

“Alright then, let’s get this show on the road,” Cassian said before finishing drying my mug and setting it back in its cabinet next to the two mugs he and Azriel had just been drinking their coffee from. 

Amren reached out a hand toward Rhys and he took it, although hesitantly. 

Cassian stepped up beside me. “Be my ride? I don’t really feel like holding onto Azriel.” And though I knew he was trying to lighten my mood, when his shoulder brushed against mine I had to fight my racing heart at the mention of being close.

Space. I liked space. 

“Yeah, let’s do it,” I said, turning toward him to wrap my arms around his muscled, Illyrian waist. I pulled my power around us, ready to whip us into the fabric of the world and just before we disappeared I heard a distant, “Watch where you put your hands!”

 

___________

 

We appeared somewhere in the Summer Court based on the sudden arid temperature and the all-consuming greenery that was speeding toward us much too quickly. Suddenly I was spinning and it wasn’t until the salty air kissed my windblown cheeks that I realized we were flying. I’d winnowed us into the air somewhere. As Cassian flew us south I was glad he’d asked to winnow with me. I can’t say Amren would have been too helpful during that freefall. 

“Thanks,” I said, breathless as I watched the passing ground we narrowly missed over my shoulder. It wasn’t like me to miss a target, or to be so powerless as to have landed in the wrong Court altogether.

“No problem. Think you can find the others for me?” He asked and tightened his grip around my waist. Though I had my wings always tucked close, it felt as if his hands were the only thing keeping me from going  _ splat _ . 

I dropped my hold on my power, my mind flying through the skies a thousand times faster than an Illyrian’s wings ever could. The home of the High Lord of Summer wasn’t too far west of us which meant I’d been way off with my winnowing. Embarrassingly off. My mind felt through villages and a few dozen flocks of birds searching for the nearest beach. And then I felt him. 

“Hold on,” I shouted against the winds building and circling around us before we disappeared again. 

  
  


___________

  
  


I hadn’t expected to appear so close to the Spring Court manor. 

This time I’d intentionally winnowed us into the sky, partially so that Cassian’s momentum wouldn’t be so jarring upon arrival and partially so I could let go of him and dip into a flashy skydive before touching down on the fine grass of the Spring Court manor lawn. I’d probably been here before as a child, before our fathers’ falling out. 

Before Tamlin killed our father.

Before Rhysand killed his. 

As if sensing my thoughts, I felt the tug of my brother’s mind before he and Amren appeared on the ground beneath where I was still gliding my way down despite Cassian’s quick landing. For some reason, being lonely in the skies was never a sorrowful endeavor for me, but always a righteous one. Perhaps it was the exhilaration. Perhaps it was the freedom. 

Azriel winnowed in at my side and I let the grin take over my face. His smile grew alongside mine as I tried to weave around him, but he weaved right back. We spun in the sky until I screamed, “Okay okay! You win!” and landed beside the others.

We didn’t bother saying anything before approaching the manor door twice as tall as I was, but Rhys and I shared a look that we knew all the others had seen. There was no time to hesitate. That’s why we’d left so quickly. Why we attempted to winnow completely here. The longer we took to consider what we were doing…

Well, I know I would never do it. 

Rhysand doesn’t knock unless it serves a purpose. In this case, he reached through the sprawling manor in search of the mind of a certain red-headed High Fae with a golden eye, beckoning him to us in the most obnoxious and hilarious way I’d ever seen. I suppose maybe the dramatic flair does run in our blood. 

The door lurched open and we met Lucien’s already disgusted face.

“You could have knocked you know,” he sneered.

Rhys grinned. “We know.”

He stepped into the emissary’s face, forcing him to retreat and offer us an open door. Rhys kept his eyes on Lucien as Amren passed through the doorway behind him, Azriel on her heels. I knew I was supposed to follow next, an Illyrian always last inside a new territory, but I froze. The pull in my chest was aflame with the misguided splendor of the mating bond, something I’d ruthlessly ignored until now. Until I was on the doorstep of the male whom fate had sent for me to have, to one day love. 

I was reading too far into this. Though special, the mating bond was meaningless. It meant nothing. My own parents were proof of it. They’d hated each other most of their lives together. The mating bond meant nothing. 

I repeated it and repeated it in my head, but the burning in my chest kept my feet planted. 

Rhysand’s eyes shot back, though not to me, but to Cassian who placed a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll go back to Velaris with you, if you want.” 

I sucked in a weighted breath that left my chest feeling heavy and shook my head. The first step was the hardest, but I climbed the few small stairs of the porch into the front door. Even indoors the smell of flowers was intoxicating, the peonies stout and the soft scented roses in full bloom despite the oncoming winter ahead. The entryway was a circular atrium, the artwork on the walls and ceiling angelic. It was a stark comparison to Under the Mountain, yet I still felt suffocated. 

Cassian and Rhys followed in my wake as we approached a large, pillared archway that led into a dining room with a table large enough for two dozen. I didn’t need to look up to see who was already sitting at the head of the table, his hair still a lush, vibrant gold and his eyes, now unburdened by his mask, a blaring green that seemed to house an entire world of life within them. 

“Welcome,” the High Lord of the Spring Court said as he rose from his seat. I felt my heaving chest as if it weren’t apart of my body anymore, the breaths raging and deep. I told myself Rhysand came to a halt by my side because he sensed me through our daemati connection, and not because it was visibly possible to see my haphazard lungs reaching for air. “Please, sit. I’ve arranged for us to have breakfast, if you all were so inclined.”

“It seems we’ve already eaten,” my brother says as he picks of an invisible thread from his brocaded jacket. No one would have ever noticed the way he took the distraction as a moment to scent his surroundings. To look for her. For Feyre. “However, I suppose we can join you around your table to keep you company.”

I hadn’t spent much time pondering my brother’s predicament with his mate, and the thought was jarring. Not because of my brother finding himself a woman, a best friend, a true lover… barf. But because I knew even if she were ready to be with him right here and now… There’s no way he would be. 

Not after Amarantha. 

“By all means,” Tamlin spoke, gesturing to the seats surrounding him just as the table altered, his magic shifting the object into the perfect size for only eight people. 

Rhysand moved to the seat opposite Tamlin and I pretended not to notice the tension growing,  oozing from the walls with every glance, every breath shared between the two High Lords within the dining hall. A war fought within me as I sat at my brother’s left, leaving his right hand seat for Amren as the Inner Circle always did. The bond called to me, its power a siren begging for the nearness of its other half while he was so close. I let myself cast a glance toward Tamlin as he returned to his seat just as Lucien sat beside him. He started to speak again, but saw my watching eyes and paused, the words disappearing from his tongue. 

Cassian found his place at my side, always my keeper. Sometimes I felt that Rhysand had tasked him specifically to watch over me, for if anyone could be stronger, better, in combat than Rhysand, they would still not stand a chance against Cassian. A flash of Under the Mountain shot through my mind and for the hundredth time I reimagined those sullen moments with an Illyrian at my side. I’d have been saved so much pain.

But, I reminded myself, I, too, am an Illyrian warrior and I was still not enough. 

“I believe we have matters of the utmost importance to discuss, however I can wait for privacy if you so wish,” Tamlin said as Azriel sat beside Amren, leaving one open seat on Tamlin’s left. 

My brother shook his head and waved a nonchalant hand. I wondered if he knew precisely where in this manor Feyre was. “This is my Inner Circle. I keep no secrets from them.”

I was a little taken aback that he would share the makings of the Inner Circle with Tamlin, but perhaps he’d already slipped around in the High Lord’s mind to judge his intentions. 

“You? The Dark Lord has an Inner Circle?” Tamlin questioned.

Lucien chuckled, his metal eye gleaming. “Like friends? What happened to pulling rank?”

We never looked toward Rhysand during meetings like these. When the Inner Circle sat in with Rhysand, though infinitely rarely, we never let ourselves even appear to question him. At home, we were equals. At home, Amren could boss him around and I could make fun of his dramas. But out in the world… Out in the world he is our leader, our pride. Out in the world Rhysand is the High Lord of the Night Court and while I thought he was just a big dork, he was also worthy of every respect I could give him for everything he’s done for me and for our people, both within Velaris and without. 

“Rank is a thing of the past, just like all that happened Under the Mountain.” Tamlin raised a thoughtful brow as my brother continued, “It is something I’m sure we all wish to forget.”

Lucien’s metal eye narrows and he turns to his High Lord. 

“I agree,” Tamlin answers. “There are many things in my past I… wish to forget.”

I can’t help but think he’s referring to the murder of our fathers, the sword of guilt that wavers above his and my brother’s throats. 

“I’ve invited you here with deep hope,” Tamlin goes on, “that you will consider an alliance with the Spring Court.”

That, I was not expecting. The pang in my chest at the ignored live wire of the bond in my chest is steep. Perhaps this had nothing to do with me at all. Perhaps I should never had come.

“And why,” I asked, my disappointment sharp on my tongue, “would the Night Court do such a thing?”

Lucien looked appalled at my outburst, as if I could make any claim for the sake of my court.

But instead of ignoring me, chiding me, or answering my brother, Tamlin turned those green eyes full of life on me and said, “Because the King of Hyburn is stirring and we’re all at risk, even the humans and the wall itself.”

The cold fear sluiced through me just as Tamlin tore his eyes from mine to the doorway at Rhysand’s back where a familiar face stands with golden brown hair and  newly pointed ears. 


	14. Chapter 14

I’d never thought of myself as a heartless person before meeting Feyre Archeron. But now, as she came to sat at the table with us, presenting her plea to protect her sisters, and her people, I felt the cold stone of my once kind heart settle into its new home of darkness. There was nothing not to like about her. I mean, she was a bit quiet, but not exactly shy as she laid out her thoughts to five strange fae once described to her as enemies, both of humans and faeries alike. Her performance against the Middengard Wyrm was impossible to forget, and just another glowing recommendation for her title as a good person. 

I tried to settle my ridiculous, immature notions. She’d never done anything to me personally and had only ever been cordial. Sure, she wasn’t fond of me when we met but I had also been weirdly in her personal space inside her prison cell. That was a fair judgement call on her part.

Still, I couldn’t get the idea of her either with my mate or with my brother out of my mind. It was a hard pill to swallow. 

I watched Azriel instead, his seat just to the right of Feyre from my view across the table. He always had a perfect expression that he was listening, but without too much focus or too much indifference. His hazel eyes flickered and shifted to meet my gaze. Azriel had always been the one waiting on the other end of my stupid ideas as a child and eventually a reckless teenager. When I’d hide my schemes from Rhysand’s worry, Azriel would always tag along just to make sure someone was there to handle the situation once it had gone horribly wrong. Sadly, this felt like one of those times. I considered letting myself speak to his mind, telling him I needed a break from the suffocating noose that was the bond within my chest pulling me toward the male leading our meeting, currently watching Feyre with an expression too ardent for me to handle. 

_ What do you think?  _ I heard in that voice I knew only I could hear. I didn’t so much as bat an eye in my brother’s direction. The few times we did speak as daemati, we refused to let it show. 

_ I think if we’re going to save Prythian, we should save all of it,  _ I sent back to him. 

_ Not about their plan,  _ Rhysand said.  _ About them.  _

Interesting. Rhys had participated in gossiping with me only on rare occasions, usually fueled by alcohol on our rooftop. This was very unusual. I let myself glance over to Feyre who was now looking at Tamlin as he added onto her details. 

_ They seem like they’re definitely dating, but nothing crazy serious.  _

Something hit my mental shields like a slap to the back of the head and I dropped my eyes to the table before me.  _ That’s not what I meant,  _ Rhysand said, his inner voice scolding.  _ I meant do you think they seem honest? They have a well thought out plan.  _

I’d considered telling him to ask his general, his second, or his spy, but as his secret keeper I decided not to.  _ Doesn’t mean it’s good. We’ll have to unite the High Lords as soon as possible if this threat is what Tamlin believes it to be. _

A pause in the line that connects my mind to my brother almost made me turn to check his expression.

“If we agree, we’ll need more concrete answers before possibly starting this war ourselves,” Rhysand said aloud, addressing Tamlin and his unknowing mate. 

Lucien shifted in his seat. “And where would you like us to get your answers, then, hm? Do you expect I can knock on Hybern’s door?”

“No,” Rhys answered before casting a glance to his right, to Amren and Azriel. “Azriel can scout amongst the shadows while we pay a visit to someone who always has answers.”

Amren clenched her teeth, the urge to bark against Rhysand’s ideas becoming too much for her. 

“But before we do,” Rhys continued, returning his attention to Tamlin, “I’ll need an agreement.”

Tamlin raised one brow. “You expect me to bargain with you?”

“Not exactly,” he answered. “If we becomes allies, I need an agreement - an oath - that our past discretions are behind us, at least until this war is done.” Tamlin opened his mouth, but Rhys interrupted. “And I need to know that we are on the same page at all times. Equals.”

_ You know the likelihood that either of you will hold to that is slim,  _ I told my brother even knowing he would ignore me.

Tamlin shot a brief glance to Feyre beside him and I worried their relationship was too far along, too secure for Rhys or I to ever get to know them truly. But then I felt it. I felt the pull in my chest as if, though he was looking at her, he was thinking of me.

“You have an agreement,” Tamlin declared, turning back to my brother.

Rhysand’s grin turned wicked and I nearly groaned with the dread that he was doing something Dark Lord-esque. “In that case, you’ll need to know that my Inner Circle has just as much authority in my court as I do. From here on, they’ll participate in our decision making.”

“That’s not what he agreed to!” Lucien spouted, rising up in his seat.

Surprisingly, it was Tamlin who answered, though Amren’s mouth was dangerously close to spewing. “Would you not also like a voice at this table, Lucien?”

Lucien looked to his High Lord, taken aback, though whether it was appalled or grateful, I couldn’t tell from my seat.

“Yes, of course.”

Tamlin nodded to him. “Then it is agreed upon. You’re Inner Circle is welcome in Spring for as long as this alliance lasts, though if any of them cross a line with any of my people I will remove them myself.”

“Not an issue,” Rhys answered. “If new terms arise, we will all gather to agree on them.”

“Agreed.”

“Wonderful, now let us really discuss this war.”

Tamlin angled his head. “What do you mean?”

“Hybern has been sieging temples throughout the Night Court,” Azriel chimed in. 

“Looking for something,” Rhys added.

“Looking for what?” Feyre asked, her eyes meeting my brother’s and I could almost feel the thunder of his heart. The poor lovestruck fool.

“We aren’t sure,” Rhys said, “but we have an idea.”

And then I realized where my brother was taking this. “You want to ask the Bone Carver?” I blurted. There was a place I was sure I would never go ever again.

“Who is the Bone Carver?” Tamlin questioned, but the rest of us overpowered him.

“Well,” Rhys drawled looking to Amren.

She nearly spit at him. “No way am I ever stepping foot back in that prison and how dare you ask me.”

“I can go,” Azriel piqued in.

“The Bone Carver is a prisoner within the borders of the Night Court,” Cassian said to Tamlin and Lucien on his left. “He’s some kind of seer. Knows all and whatnot. But he plays games with your mind and will only speak when he feels it’s worth it.” He turned to me. “I think he’s always found me to be boring,” he laughed.

I rolled my eyes. “You are anything but boring, my friend.”

“Alright, fine, I will go.” Rhysand waves his hands before him, keeping Amren’s wrath at bay. 

Tamlin lays a hand on the table. “I’ll go with you.”

“Actually,” Rhys said, “I was hoping you would start drafting letters to the other courts. Possibly starting to meet them, see if they will join us?”

The High Lord of Spring eyed my brother. “Fair enough seeing as they wouldn’t accept the invitation quite as promptly from your hands.”

Rhysand sucks in a breath, “And I was also thinking Feyre could join me.”

Her eyes lit with hope.

“If she wants to,” he added.

She looked to Tamlin who was looking off somewhere, concern rittling his forehead. Eventually he said, “It is up to you.”

Feyre turned to Rhysand and said, “Yes, I will go with you to see the Bone Carver.”


	15. Chapter 15

 

I highly doubt under normal circumstances any of us would be willing to align ourselves with the Spring Court, but these circumstances weren’t exactly normal. I wasn’t sure if Tamlin was aware of the bond between my brother and Feyre, but he seemed at least a little more open to the possibility than Feyre herself. I was amazed, once more, by her bravery in winnowing off with my brother to a magical prison with little introduction. I was also wary of the fact that Tamlin let her go without so much as a “be safe he’s a murderer”. 

It was just the type of disclaimers my brother and I were used to. 

And now, as I sat uncomfortably on a stone bench in the front gardens of the Spring Court manor, I let myself think of any possible scenario where this day wouldn’t end awkwardly. 

“Hey,” Azriel said, grabbing my attention. I turned and saw him standing just outside the doors of Tamlin’s home with Amren right beside him. “I’m taking Amren home to her apartment. I’ll be back. Cassian is still making a perimeter check of the grounds.”

I gave him a thumbs up and hoped that would be enough.

Amren approached the Illyrian, wrapping an arm around him. His waist was the length of her entire tiny arm, shoulder to fingertip. They disappeared with the distinct, chilling sound of a winnow and I turned back to watch the flowers. 

They bobbed softly in the mystical breeze, the long stems of lilac flowers bending, but never breaking. I wondered if Tamlin moved each flower of his own will, or if controlling the season was something that came naturally to the High Lord’s power. I would have to ask Rhys if he must always think of the shield around Velaris or if it’s some kind of spell that he need only cast once for it to be tied to his magic. 

I wondered what it would be like in another world where good things truly happened to good people, though I suppose it was presumptuous of me to believe I was to be considered a good person. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but conceive a life where my mate had found me and sought after me. A world where I could be a treasure and not tarnished brass being passed off as royal gold. I wondered what I would be like in the Spring Court, were my mate to find me worthy. I wondered what I would do all day beneath the tapestry of life that would be my front yard. I wondered if I would be happy.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

I turned, my throat swallowing a steep cold gulp as I blinked away the lingering dew in my eyes. 

Tamlin approached me hesitantly, his shoulders finally as relaxed as they had been the last time we’d snuck in a conversation. But this was not then. Here, we were free with the rest of our hundreds of years of life left. Here things would be forever messy.

“It is,” I replied as he came to lean on a tree near my bench.

Tamlin looked out to the endless garden grounds. “I know some people find Spring to be too perfect - an avoidance of the flaws in life,” he said, reaching out his boot to touch his toe with a nearby patch of geranium stems. “But I find Spring to be enduring. My lands represent everything survived for myself and all of the fae of Prythian… That even after the darkest, coldest of times there can be a new beginning. There can always be hope.”

I looked to my mate with a crack in my chest. “And what, exactly, are you hoping for?”

His eyes found mine and the hesitation behind them… It went on too long before he said, “I’m hoping to preserve our continent. I’m hoping to protect my land and my people.”

“And Feyre and her people?”

“Yes,” he whispered. “All of us must stick together.”

I tensed, pulling my hands to my lap. “Is that the real reason you brought my brother and I here?”

He shoved off the tree and stepped in my direction. His golden hair a bright white in the midday sun. “Adria,” he started.

“You can’t expect me to believe you’ve suddenly decided to make amends with Rhysand and our court after hundreds of years of being enemies.”

He gestured with his hand. “It’s for the greater good. This war would affect us all.”

I raised my eyebrows at him, a challenge. “I don’t believe you.”

He stepped back and loosed a deep sigh. “I-,” he said, but choked on his own words, turning back toward the nearest tree, hiding his face from my sight. “I need to protect you.”

_ I need to protect you. _

The words dropped in my heart like stones meant to drown me in the ocean off the side of the Summer Court, my life and death a mere spectacle for all who’d travel to see it.

“You don’t need to do anything for me,” I answered, attempting to raise my voice above the weak murmur I felt in my chest. Pieces of my unruly black hair fell from its bun, dropping down close enough for my restless fingers to twirl. 

He whipped around. “But, you see, I do. I have to protect you. I have to be near you. I have to know you’re okay. It never stops!”

I pull back. “It never stops?”

“I didn’t ask for this… this…”

“Bond. Mating bond,” I clarified, my eyes steeling in an icy stare. 

He looked up to the sky and then over to the front doors of his manor in the distance, as if he hoped Lucien would walk out to him right on cue. 

“I don’t know what I think about this,” he said softly. “About you.”

I rose from my seat and walked away from him, eyeing the forests beside the garden. Its rough terrain would always bring me more comfort than the organized and meticulous flower croppings. “I didn’t ask for this either.”

“Adria, wait,” Tamlin called out, but his voice was a melancholy sound that sunk in the air between us. 

I wanted to keep moving. I wanted to hide in the never-ending trees, pretending I was lost and no one. I wanted to feel nameless amongst all new surroundings, in an imperfect place with other imperfect things, where I could be anyone or anything. I could see the branches of the outer trees bending and smashing against and into each other in flawed arms. At least the forest of Spring wasn’t perfect. But as I stared at the winding, hash of oak and sycamore, I knew I couldn’t let this go. I wouldn’t be able to walk away with all this weight still inside me.

“No!” I yelled, turning back to the High Lord of Spring, to my mate. He was frozen in place. He hadn’t even taken a step in my direction. I stomped across the flawlessly manicured lawn, unwilling to cease my too large steps or calm the tension in my face as what started as hurt billowed into rage in my chest. Tamlin adjusted his stance, bracing himself. Only then did I realize that my power was swelling inside me, flaring a warning through my skin. 

“No,” I repeated. “You do not get to feel sorry for yourself because you found yourself in the possession of something sacred to so many people. You do not get to act like I have asked anything of you or demanded some kind of relationship. Not once have I mentioned anything of the sort and yet you act like I’m a deep inconvenience to your _perfect_ life with your undead human girlfriend. I know that it’s possible for a male to contain himself in the throes of a mating bond. Don’t act like you have no _choice_ in the matter, like you have no self control. You have no idea what it truly means to be _helpless._ ” I spat my final word at him, hearing a familiar sharp sound behind us.

“I never said any such thing!” he yelled, his temper finally rearing its ugly head. 

I let my power consume me, the feeling of finding something that had long been lost washed over me. I felt the kiss of night begin to spill from my pores and I let it. “Do I look like I need protection?”

I could nearly see the fury and frustration emanating from the High Lord.  When Tamlin nearly rolled his eyes, I realized I was being petulant, but there was no turning back - no turning off the desperate switch that had flipped somewhere deep and dark inside me. 

I stepped up into his face, my lips inches from his. “I didn’t ask to be your mate, Tamlin.”

“Fine,” he hissed through his teeth.. “Fine… Go back to Eris, then.”

I exploded. Magic burst from my body, its pulse a visible wave of night that rippled through the air. It lashed at Tamlin and rung out through the manor grounds. I felt myself falling before I realized my chest was heaving, my breaths running away from me faster and faster. 

And then there were two strong arms wrapped around me.

“Back the fuck away from her,” Cassian roared, lifting me off the ground. My vision tunneled into a blur of his tied back hair.

Behind me somewhere I heard movement. 

“Mates or not, you do  _ not  _ talk to her like that,” Cassian snapped.

Tamlin growled. “You don’t tell me what to do, bastard.”

“Enough.”

At first I thought it was the mating bond, tugging me through my panic, but then I realized it was something stronger, something greater. That voice. My vision spotted and then cleared, my breathing slowing and the world coming back into focus.

Rhysand stepped up beside where Cassian still held me with Feyre trailing behind him. She looked nervous and unsure.

“If you truly intend for our courts to work together this was a pitiful beginning,” my brother whispered, his voice like dripping venom.

“Mates?” Feyre asked, looking at Tamlin with the most innocent, bewildered eyes. 

“Go inside, Feyre.” Tamlin snapped. “Now.”

“She can do whatever she wishes,” Rhys replied. Cassian squeezed me a little harder as he looked over to his High Lord. His gaze promised death, but he would not harm my mate. Not without the word from me. I imagined the moment Rhys felt my power swell, he would have sent Cassian to find me. 

“She can go inside. Right. Now.” Tamlin seethed, his claws starting to dig beneath his skin. 

Feyre hesitated, but Rhys answered for her. “Why don’t you leave her out of this?”

“I thought supposedly some males could control themselves when it came to the, oh so precious mating bond?” Tamlin smarted back. His voice was equally venomous.

I resisted the urge to shoot Rhys an apologetic look. I had no idea Tamlin would piece things together so quickly. 

Lucien stepped onto the manor porch just as Azriel appeared in the sky above us. 

“We can talk about  this in private,” Rhys said.

Tamlin shrugged. “If you’ve got something to hide.”

Night wisped silent tendrils of stars and infinite darkness from my brother’s skin. His power pooled around him, reaching for Tamlin. “Do you really want to argue with me on this? We have fragile enough ties despite your so-called  truce.”

“My truce stands.”

Cassian chuckled and I shook in his arms suddenly realizing I could stand on my own. I pulled out of the embrace, but stayed at his side though half a head shorter than him. 

“You’re kidding yourself if you still think we would ally ourselves with you after this stunt.” Rhys replied.

“This stunt?” Tamlin barked a mocking laugh . “I didn’t pull any stunt. If you’d like to keep my truce and overlook the fact that a member of your Inner Circle attacked me, I’ll abide despite her war-bringing fit.”

I cringed and did my best to ignore the shame blossoming  through my gut. I felt Cassian and Rhys both sway my direction, adjusting their stance. 

“If you think I can pretend you didn’t just tell my sister to return to someone who bought and tortured her, you are sorely mistaken.” Information I assumed he gathered from Cassian’s thoughts. “From my interpretation, mates could not hurt one another, though it seems that’s all you’ve managed to do since meeting my sister.” I felt the weight of my brother’s anger tightening my chest. “If you think I am not a vengeful male, you must be forgetting the night after your family murdered my father.”

We needed to get out of here. There was a shift in the air as Cassian, Azriel, and even Lucien felt how terribly this conversation was about to become. 

“Rhys,” I spoke softly, looking directly at my mate as I said, “I think we should go.”

He hesitated, as I knew he would. His nostrils flared and his magic whipped around in the hot afternoon sun. 

“I want to go,” I said again and this time he turned to face me, meeting my waiting eyes. 

He looked back to Tamlin and said, “I will not forget this,” before winnowing away, leaving Feyre’s solemn eyes alone behind him. 

Cassian looped his arms around me and leapt into the skies, taking flight without having to ask about my depleted, uncontrollable magic. He flew me up to Azriel who winnowed us both as far away as he could. 


	16. Chapter 16

**This chapter was written to "Jealous" by Labrinth on repeat.**

**My playlist "Rhysand's Sister" is on Spotify.**

* * *

We reappeared in a medley of trees, much different from the mangled ones of the Spring Court that would be burned into my mind from this moment onward.

Bad metaphor, I decided remembering the scars between my wings I still hadn't been brave enough to look at.

"What happened?" Rhys cut through the air before he'd even put both feet on the ground. Azriel and Cassian both took a step back from us.

"I don't know," I tried. I wasn't sure whether I should be apologizing or not. Whether I was in the right or not. I wasn't sure of much after the gaping hole I felt in my gut. The bond was still there, but tortured and twisted. One more broken piece of me to add to my collection of shattered glass. I imagined what colors would make up my mismatched glass window like those of the Priestess' temples.

Only black came to mind.

"You don't know? Cauldron, seriously?" Rhys chided and because I knew he was battling with his own bond tugging at him in relentless need, I let him.

I couldn't say the same for Cassian. "C'mon man."

Rhys darted his eyes to his brothers, his best friends. Azriel tipped the slightest nod, agreeing with Cassian and I was again grateful for these people who had somehow found our family.

"You heard what he said to her, man," Cassian added when Rhys' stance didn't relax.

My brother took a deep breath and turned back to me. "What happened?" he asked again, this time sounding much more like my brother.

"I…" I started, but the replay fizzled in my mind into whispers of hurt. I pulled my hair down, letting the long dark tresses act as my own personal curtain of protection and turned away from them. "He acted like the bond was… Like he was helpless."

The three Illyrian men stared at me and I begged them to understand. I begged them to need no more from me. I couldn't give any more of myself. I couldn't continue to expect that I would ever be given more. If I wanted more, I would have to take it.

"He has no idea what helplessness feels like," Rhysand said, his voice quiet, but strong. My heart thudded in my chest at his words, remembering then that he, too, was in the throes of understanding a mating bond and navigating these waters that did seem to only further my own lack of control in my life. Pride shot through me when I caught my brother's gaze. Perhaps the mating bond was doing well for him if he was standing up to his demons a bit more than he's been running from them.

I nodded and looked around my trees again, only now noticing their dying auburn hue. The burnt orange colors swirled in my vision as I realized they were on the branches and the ground, hiding any hint of grass that lie beneath. I backed up until my back hit something hard and I whipped around landing myself face to face with an Autumn Court tree.

Trees were not my thing.

"Gally," Cassian called, his voice almost a question. His footsteps crunched and I could nearly see the fall leaves beneath his leather boots.

I was going to be sick.

My brother's hand grabbed me by the arm and turned me toward where all three had come up on me. All three so close. Too close.

I felt the leaves closing in, as if they were so close I could feel their crisp reminders of death on my skin.

This is my brother, I reminded myself. I tried. I really tried.

But they were just too close.

I opened my mouth to warn them, but no words came out. An involuntary hand touched my open lips and I was pale, shaking. I clung to the details. The color. Desperately reaching for the present as the past sucked me in and all I could see were leaves and fire and bodies of bare skin, so many bodies on top of me.

A body crushed into mine and I gasped for breath just as I felt the winnow tear me through the air.

And then there were clear skies. I didn't notice I was falling until I landed on a hard back, wings outstretched. I looked up into Azriel's eyes, his arms still dangling from where he dropped me before he flew away.

Leaving me in the open air. Clouds danced as we soared through the fresh taste of high altitudes. There was space. There was freedom.

No hands on my body. Nothing closing me in, drowning me out.

I drank the air like I'd been dying of thirst.

With a swift roll, I tumbled to the right and my flyer dipped his wing. I dropped down through the sky, my hair tearing through the wind. Cassian watched as I descended beneath him, his eyes a mist of gentleness I'd missed in my old friend. A smile was born on my face in a quiet way I couldn't explain and I ripped my wings to life from the pocket I held them in.

My brother flew off to our left and the four of us drifted through the softening afternoon air until I came up beside Rhysand and said, "We should go back."

He descended immediately, finding a rocky clearing near the rear of a pattern of hills. I followed and before I landed he asked, "What?"

"We should go through with this alliance and see where it takes us," I answered just as Azriel and Cassian flew drills over our heads like militant vultures.

"Where it takes us?" he repeated.

"If there is truly going to be a war, then we need to be prepared for it. I'd rather be working with them instead of seeing what they would do on their own." I couldn't bring myself to say his name. I wondered when I would ever be able to speak the High Lord of the Spring Court's name with the same ease as any other male. As if he were nothing special. As if he weren't my mate.

Rhys searched his thoughts with a brief stare into the distance behind me before saying, "I agree, but we can't have any more outbursts like this. I will not tolerate this kind of behavior from him. He hurts you again I will end him."

I rolled my eyes lightheartedly, but my heart lifted.

"Okay, well, I'll take away his ability to speak for a few days. Or maybe years."

I shook my head and found myself again thinking of my gratefulness for this male, for my brother. "We'll see," I told him and we looked up to Azriel and Cassian before leaping into the skies to join them once more.

"So?" Cassian asked. Azriel continued to search the skies, as if there was never rest from threats against the High Lord of the Night Court. I wondered if Azriel ever thought himself to be my brother's bodyguard? I'd have to ask him one day. Definitely in front of someone that would make him blush.

"We'll head back to Spring in the morning. For now, let's go home. Let this blow over." Listening to Rhys talk to Cassian was one of my favorite small things in life. A lord speaking with his general. They could be talking about the weather and their tone would still squeeze out every shred of professionalism within them.

"Gally?"

I turned to Cassian who apparently had a death wish. "Call me Gally one more time and see what happens."

He gave me a look that said yeah right before responding, "You up to winnow back?"

And I knew that my brother would think about how he'd intended to take me back himself, in my weaker state and whatnot, but something about Cassian almost challenging me to rise above and still be able to winnow us both… I was again, grateful.

"You know it."

I launched myself at him and he fell back, letting out a startled, "Oh!" before I flung us through a rift in the world.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Thanks for tuning in! I have news! I am participating in a collaborative story that plays out a classic "murder mystery dinner party locked in a mansion scene" in the ACOTAR world with the next generation of High Lords. Take a peek at my heir of the Autumn Court, Brynle, a strong willed red head whose greatest fear has come true following the death of her father, Eris. Watch her take over her father's shoes with his brothers on her heels and mayyyyyybe find a mate in a certain night court son?

This fic is published under a different account "acourtofdreamers123" (wattpad) and "acourtofdreamers" (fanfic dotnet) and the story is called "A Court of Dreamers". Check it out on either of those sites (soon to come to ao3, waiting on invite) and show me and my SEVEN friends some love.

As always, thank you for reading and reviewing. So much love.

Xoxo

Jordan


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